


Marik & Bakura Go To C**town

by Anonymous



Series: LittleKuriboh's Fics [6]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series, Yu-Gi-Oh! - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-31
Updated: 2011-05-31
Packaged: 2020-10-20 05:00:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20669720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Thiefshipping up the wazoo in this fic written for charity.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Marik & Bakura Go To Censored Town](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/520574) by LittleKuriboh. 

Desert winds threatened to ruin Bakura's perfect blend of wild, immaculate hair, as the crooning melody of Horse With No Name surrounded them and gave poetry to their escape. Behind them, the remains of the old hideout clattered and burned in the endless sun. Smoke still itched at his nostrils, acrid and irritating, while beside him Marik leaned forward in the driver's seat and cackled - also irritating - like they hadn't almost been blown sky-high. The idea of being blown alongside Marik wasn't distasteful to him, although given the context - that of an explosive device secreted within a faux Christmas present delivered to them by a long-dead Egyptian Pharaoh - he couldn't say he'd enjoyed it nearly as much as he would the other.

They'd made it to the Marikmobile - which, unlike the Mokubamobile, actually existed and was a sleek pink 1963 Cadillac with no top and an engine that had seen far better days - and careened through the hidden exit marked with the words 'Secret Area'. At least, it was meant to say that, but Marik had ran out of space while painting the steel doors. Instead it merely read 'Secret Are', and when questioned, Marik would explain that it was a thought provoking statement. "Secret are…?" He would ask them, his voice pitching up awkwardly as if expecting them to finish the grammatically obtuse sentence. Toward the end of their all too brief tenure, somebody had crudely drawn an S between the R and the E, causing it to take on a whole new meaning.

"Secret arse?" Marik had blurted at the following meeting. "Okay, which of you arses secretly put their secret arse on my rear entrance?"

Bakura grinned, though it was a sterile thing. The way you'd smile remembering someone who used to bully you getting expelled. It was gratifying, but it was a gift that came attached with so many painful ribbons that it made your mouth eventually recede into a thin glum line the more you dwelled on it. Of course Zombie Boy was blamed. He took the fall for all of Bakura's tricks. But Zombie Boy was long gone, and with him, it seemed, their hideout.

The car wasn't making much progress, although the way Marik was behaving you'd think they were re-enacting the pod race sequence from Star Wars. Had Marik been even remotely cultured, Bakura would have compared it to the chariot scene from Ben Hur - but no. No, Marik was definitely Anakin, and this was definitely Tatooine, and Bakura was the reluctant Liam Neeson wishing he'd never even been cast in this dreck.

Something fell from the sky and exploded in the road ahead. Nothing significant - just a puff of smoke and noise, but of course Bakura found himself being hit in the face with the charred remains of whatever it was. He reached up and wiped the sooty mess from his eyes, holding up the last few pages of what was once a poorly fashioned scrapbook named The Tome Of Villainous Achievements. He remembered this. Their first evil council session, when it had just been the two of them. Before they'd sent out all the invitations. Or rather, before Marik sent out the invitations. Bakura was content to just relax on the couch and watch him work, pretending to listen to the words coming from his mouth and instead simply enjoying the way his tongue moved across the stamps as he placed them on their respective lavender envelopes. Simpler times. Of course, when Marik was involved, simplicity came naturally.

"Lah-lah-LAH-lah-la-la-lah!" Marik parroted as the song began to fade into static. Bakura grimaced. Somehow the static had more of a tune to it. "I like road trips! We should be filming this, Bakura. It would make for a great movie. Think of the high-jinx!"

More like low-jinx. Bakura remembered all too vividly what happened last time they'd attempted to shoot a film together. "I'm trying not to." He leafed through the half-pages from what barely constituted a scrapbook, and found a picture of the two of them with their arms around each other, Bakura noticeably less pale in his cheeks, and Marik, well… Had anybody seen the picture they would have insisted Marik looked drunk. He would have told them that that was just Marik. No alcohol necessary. This was the moment when they had decided to put their differences aside and work as a team. For all the hate and cruelty Bakura was capable of, when Marik had asked him to be his 'BFF', he just couldn't say no. Never could. Of course, he had assumed one of the letters in 'BFF' stood for something far more lewd - and it wasn't the letter B.

The car lurched as it ran over something that looked like half a couch cushion, all chewed up and riddled with everyday shrapnel, and Bakura snuck the photo into his pants pocket. They had gradually crawled all the way up to fifty miles per hour, and Marik was hollering something about selling DVDs of their exciting trip, as though this whole thing had been planned in advance. Like he was enjoying their almost obliteration and felt it could be marketed.

"And on the cover, it will just be me surrounded by European girls who are all like, wow!" Marik described, moving his left hand across the filthy windshield in a short arc, as if to behold some miracle of nature, like a field of naturally occurring candy canes. Marik would have liked that image. "That guy certainly is sexually attractive to me! And maybe one of them will have, like, really big boobs! Not even sexy, it's just amusing, because they're enormous! Have you ever seen Maury Povich?"

"No, I ha-"

"Neither have I," Marik cut him off, "But I hear some of the girls on that show, man! Some of those girls have… they have problems!"

"Really."

"With their breasts. Sometimes." Marik was losing control of his train of thought. The way he stammered it was like watching someone try to lasso a charging rhinoceros. Obviously panicked and yet he seemed to think he knew what he was doing. "It's like some kind of freak show. It's totally offensive. We should watch it, Bakura."

"So am I on-"

"We should get Maury Povich to be in our road trip movie!" Marik declared.

Bakura ignored him and continued. "So am I on the DVD cover, or am I not as important as some European girl's chest?"

"Um," was Marik's nonplussed reaction. Something told Bakura that Marik hadn't expected him to take the idea so seriously. There obviously wasn't going to be a DVD, or large breasted women - European or otherwise - but Marik's brainwaves tended to take on a life of their own. This was the first time Bakura had seemed remotely invested. At least by the notion of promotional art. "Maybe you could be Maury's sidekick."

"Couldn't he be my sidekick?" Bakura asked, reaching down and thumbing at the radio's ancient switches, hoping to get some sound out of it that didn't make him apprehensive about the possibility of creatures from straight out of a Silent Hill game showing up. "I mean, at least let me be a main character in our own movie."

"It's a road trip movie, Bakura!" Marik chided, not even watching the road anymore. There was literally nothing or nobody around for miles. That's why they chose the location for the secret hideout in the first place. Desolation. That and Marik wanted to someday build the world's first life-size sandcastle. He'd managed to build part of the moat, which really only involved a lot of digging and cursing, before he gave up and decided to just build lots of very little ones. Through the rear-view mirror, Bakura could see them receding into the horizon. At least not everything was destroyed. They still had Sandcastle City. "It's not about the characters! It's about the journey!"

"That's rather profound," Bakura remarked. "For you, I mean."

"And the vehicles!" Marik added, deflating Bakura's prior response. "It's all about what car we're driving! And how much rubber we can burn!"

"I think we've burned more than enough rubber for one day," said Bakura, slapping his arm across the metal frame of the door beside him and turning to look back at the decimated hole where there once was a hideaway. As he watched, the whole thing collapsed in a plume of oddly purple smoke. There was a flash, and a crack, and something big and metal whizzed past them at a ludicrous velocity. Bakura turned to watch it slam violently into the side of a rock shaped like someone's hand giving the hook 'em horns sign, his expression never shifting from that of indifference, and recognised at once their old microwave. The source of many a hasty meal. It was either that or order from the local kebab shop, situated approximately two hundred miles away. The bill was always enormous, but fortunately all their delivery boys were called Steve. One of the few times Marik's powers proved useful. "Amongst other things."

Bakura wondered to himself how the Pharaoh had been able to deliver a bomb to their secret base of operations. After all, they didn't technically have an address. The invitations had simply read 'Take a right at the bush that looks like Stan Bush and follow the sound of 80s music until you find it'. Marik had insisted that everyone would know what he was talking about. Then they'd spent the next week or two playing The Touch on a non-stop blaring loop through the loudspeakers installed within the tomb's outer façade, just waiting. After all was said and done, Bakura decided to just call a few people behind Marik's back and give them more specific directions, allowing Marik to believe that his cryptic series of clues had been what actually caused his council to converge. All Bakura needed to tell them was "Head to the kebab shop and follow the delivery boy who has a sort of glazed over look in his eyes", and within the next twelve hours they were all plotting to overthrow Yugi Moto, in between mouthfuls of Indian food.

Yet the Pharaoh didn't have any problem delivering a package to Somewhere In Egypt, as the subtitles so very often described. Perhaps that was the problem; as a main character, that pasty deep-voiced twat was able to bend the rules to his advantage whenever it suited. The ability to read subtitles could easily have been amongst his fourth-wall breaking repertoire, and while the words Somewhere In Egypt could have feasibly pointed to any given location, odds were that the Pharaoh's will would be done. He had played one too many a card game with the bloke to think otherwise. It was pointless to even challenge the guy.

So why did he?

Why even team up with a whole host of villains to try and overthrow someone who was just so damn… unoverthrowable? He knew it was a fruitless exercise, a waste of everyone's time. Nobody in their right mind would think otherwise.

"Hey Bakura!" Marik interrupted his inner dialogue. Bakura turned to see the boy wearing a round pair of sunglasses that sufficiently hid the vacant, childlike manner in his violet eyes to the point that he actually looked somewhat mature and - Bakura swallowed - handsome. "We're on a mission from God!"

Bakura slumped down in his seat, folding his arms awkwardly about his lap and looking off to the horizon where the sun too was trying to hide its slowly reddening face. He closed his eyes and tried to think of things that didn't involve Marik's bare shoulders or midriff, or feeling his own lips upon them. Yet another fruitless exercise, yet another waste of time.

Nobody in their right mind indeed.


	2. Chapter 2

He had been asleep for over five hours before finally coming to, the pressure of the seatbelt an odd sensation on his chest, like something or someone had him pinned against a leather wall. Bakura always remembered his dreams. They were vivid things, and that was sometimes too much like a curse. Frenzied memories would rise up at him out of the murk, images of his family and friends from the old times. The all too brief times. The bloody, barbaric times. Or sometimes he would be teased by some lucid pleasure - the thought of finally destroying the Pharaoh and sitting upon his throne, or the idea that he was finally free of this accursed trinket and could reach up and tear a hole in the universe so wide that everything would fall into the black and the light would be his alone to snuff out. Other times, like in the dream he'd just been startled out of, he would dream of Marik. All those temptations he'd felt, all the signals he'd noticed, burning in the back of his mind like the most vibrant and dizzying desert flame. Their bodies together, fingers locked tight as they went at it, Marik a gorgeous, slender warrior and Bakura his legs flung around his waist, allowing him access to everything he had. Everything he wanted.

And now he was awake, and Marik was poking him in an all too different way.

"Bakura? Wake up? Are you awake? Is that your awake face?" Marik jabbed him again and again with the Millennium Rod, digging it gently into his side. "Wakey wakey, eggs and-"

"What?" he snarled, lurching forward and scowling as he felt the flesh on the back of his neck flare up. Driving through the desert like this was not going to be kind to his skin. He was half-angry at Marik, half-afraid that he'd said something incriminating in his sleep. Not necessarily something that suggested Bakura wanted to screw him; he was mostly afraid of making any unconscious comment that might give away the fact that he enjoyed Marik's company as anything more than a villain. Then he noticed the sign.

It hung loosely between two posts, pathetic and wizened by time like an old man's privates. With every breath the wind took, it creaked and jostled, and in the moonlight - for they had obviously been driving for some time - it was difficult to make out, unlike Bakura's dream which had been both well-lit and involved more than enough making out. Beneath whatever was written, a white chalk arrow pointed down a long stretch of road that seemed to veer off the edge of the world. No matter how much he squinted, in his waking stupor Bakura couldn't tell quite what the sign said.

"Where are we?" he asked. "I don't remember seeing anything like this before. I thought we were driving to Detroit." The plan, should anything have happened to their original hideout, was to regroup in Michigan and retriple their efforts. Bakura had told him that 'retriple' wasn't a word, to which Marik merely pointed out that redoubling wouldn't have sufficed. The more he stared at the sign, the more he was able to read - the words definitely started with a C. "Is this the way to Cairo airport?"

Upon closer inspection, the C word in question wasn't Cairo at all, and when he realised this he felt insurmountable relief that they weren't transporting Rex and Weevil in the vehicle with them. For the word, had they seen it, would have driven them to a giggle fit that may have lasted a whole hour. Possibly a whole twenty four hours if gone unchecked, but Bakura knew that had they been within throttling distance, he would've ensured the laughter suffered a swift, whimpering defeat.

"WHAT Town?" he spat, shooting a disbelieving look at Marik. Marik's expression was that of a ten year old child who was waiting for his mother to finish preparing his cereal, eager and expectant, but not at all baffled or affronted as Bakura felt. "I'm serious, Marik. Where the bugger is this?"

"Inappropriate use of the word bugger!" Marik snapped, as if keeping score. He reached into the glove compartment, where he'd been storing the Millennium Rod throughout their trip. Bakura half expected him to pull out a swear jar, but instead Marik retrieved a hand-scrawled map that Bakura noted had his hand-writing all over it. Various points of interest were highlighted with words such as THIS ROCK LOOKS LIKE A BUTTOCKS, and A GOOD PEE-TINKLING SPOT. _In case he's ever caught short, _Bakura supposed. "According to my calculations, we are… way off course."

"Off course?"

"Yes, but it's not a big deal," he urged, "We're exactly where I want us to be."

"… Come again?" Bakura asked. "How can we be off course if we're where you want to be…?" He remembered who he was talking to. Or rather, talking against. It was, at times, both an uphill and a downhill struggle just conversing with him. Another set of crooked words on the map: BAKURA SWORE AT A BIRD HERE. Bakura remembered. It had been giving him a funny look. "Just tell me where the bug… Where the bloody hell we are."

"Read the sign, Bakura!"

Not only had he read it, he'd studied the crude picture faded into the corner of the white rock beside the road like an out of place welcome mat. A whale - of all the places to find such an animal - grinning up at him and spraying buckets of white foam into the air. Some kind of mascot. It seemed to read into his reluctancy, smile broadening across the wind scoured cracks and its tiny black eyes blinking uncaringly. It seemed to say 'What's the problem, big guy?' Bakura wanted to swear loudly at it. Another noteworthy spot on Marik's map. Bakura swore at a cartoon whale here.

"Well?" Marik leaned in, blond hair creeping into the corners of his eyes as he cooed. Bakura looked at him, all innocent and pretty. He didn't know if he wanted to punch him or kiss him. Either one would have been violent. The latter perhaps more so. "What does it say?"

That last syllable had been stretched into infinity. Bakura growled, eyes still fixed on the whale, his face flushed - or rather, as flushed as it could be. His complexion was such that even the dirtiest thoughts could go by undetected, but right now, in this car, in this position, so close to him - he knew his face was telling a story. A cheap and filthy story that you'd typically find while lurking on a fanfic website. Something short, with cliché spats of dialogue stuffed hastily between needlessly descriptive pornographic paragraphs.

His eyes rolled upwards and he squinted, like a spoilt child tasting medicine for the first time, and at last he read aloud the words chipped into the wood:

"Cum Town."

The moment he said it, the twinges in his stomach - some might call them butterflies, though Bakura would only ever associate those with the enjoyment he felt at tearing their wings off - rose to a crescendo and then fell still. The embarrassment he experienced reading the words disappeared, and he was overtaken instead by curiosity. Why had Marik brought him here? He'd said this was where he wanted them to be. What did that mean? Did Marik have plans? Plans that didn't involve the rest of the Evil Council? Marik never wanted anything more than to plot or parlay or practise his various evil skills. Perhaps he was ready to take their partnership to the next level.

Or maybe Bakura was giving him far too much credit, as usual.

"Why in the blithering recesses of C'thulhu's armpits are we venturing toward a place called Cum Town?" Bakura demanded, feigning anger when in reality he was excited, on edge. Throughout his entire body, he felt an odd rush; he could hear in the dimmest parts of his thoughts a noise not unlike a tuning fork long after you've struck it, a waiting sound, like something not quite asleep but not quite ready to be awakened. The beginnings of a boner crept into his trousers, and he emphasised his scowl so that Marik's gaze couldn't readily fall upon it. "Is this your idea of a joke?"

"Nope!" replied Marik, slapping either side of the steering wheel and digging his nails into the worn leather. Bakura watched his hands and imagined himself poised in front of him, his backside nudging into Marik's face and teasing at him. His pulse raced and he felt his long dead heart beating, a rhythmic thing to go with the constant, dull note playing in the orchestral pit that was his hormones. "We came here to have some fun. I mean, I know you're a grumpy guy, Bakura, but even you have to lighten up once in a while."

Once in a while he did lighten up. Usually when he was around Marik. He thought back to the photo in his pocket, and his scowl threatened to become something more pleasant. Something nice. He clutched at his forehead, acting indignant to throw Marik off the scent of his arousal, and slammed his fist into the dashboard.

"Buggery," he muttered half-heartedly. "Marik, this is neither the time nor the place." As a matter of fact, it was precisely the right place. Of all the places to finally pop their rotten cherry, an off-the-beaten-path town named thusly was as appropriate as they were going to get. "Why would you even want to do this? We were almost killed. Shouldn't we go find the others?"

"The others can wait!" Marik laughed, and for once there was nothing devious or cruel about it. "This is our night, Bakura!"

He started the engine up again. Bakura wondered how long they'd been parked there, him fast asleep while Marik waited impatiently for him to come to. In his mind, Marik had given him at least a few hours, his head lolling to the side and resting on Marik's chest, car silenced so as not to disturb him. Sighing quietly, Bakura realised that perhaps every romantic moment they'd ever shared came down to his own imagination and exaggeration. Glimpses of 'might-be's and 'could've-been's. Nothing tangible. Nothing concrete. Nothing hard. Well, except one thing.

"You really want to do this?" he asked, sitting back and fiddling with his seatbelt. A rare bashful moment. He rejected it almost instantly, dragging his fingernails down the strap and hissing through his teeth. "I've never really much cared for fun. Especially with you."

Marik didn't reply for a moment, either because he was focusing on turning the car around or because he'd decided to actually think about something Bakura had said for once. Bakura watched the stars careen past Marik's face as they pivoted, trails of dust whipping loosely through the air, and he felt like the whole world was tilting in one direction and he was scrambling to get to the safest point - some unseen ledge that would hold him in place. It was the feeling of change, neither wanted nor unwanted. Dramatic change, like empires overthrown or cities buried forever, creatures going extinct or stars eclipsed. Change you could feel but could not control. Bakura felt it, felt Marik pushing them into a situation that would change them both forever, who they were and what they meant to each other. He felt that this night was something destined. And the note in his skull grew louder still.

"I never thought you'd actually want this," Bakura spoke, more to himself than to Marik. "Never dreamed you could."

"Are you kidding me?" Marik bleated, slamming his foot on the accelerator and driving full force down the road to Cum Town. "I love theme parks!"

"Theme… parks?" Bakura coughed, the oncoming wind grabbing him by the cheeks and pinching his face roughly like an obnoxious uncle. "What are you talking about?" "Yeah! Theme parks!" Marik shouted, his butt lifting off the driver's seat and slamming back down roughly as they slipped over a pot hole. "I mean, with a name like that, this has to be some kind of water park, right? I wanna ride the log flume!"

A groan was all Bakura felt he could muster. And then quietly: "Whoopee."


	3. Chapter 3

"Don't forget to wash where the sun doesn't shine!" Marik's voice came through the door.

Bakura cringed, a familiar spasm affecting his face as he reached blindly for the towel rack through the plastic folds of the curtain. His other hand rested on the shower head, which now dripped languidly every so often, brief splashes flicking at his face like a toned down Chinese torture device. Lifting one gaunt leg up and over the lip of the cubicle, he strode naked into the cloudy air of the bathroom, wrapping the meagre white towel about him and drying off. His damp, lifeless hair soon bristled back into its familiar shock of spikes and bangs.

It had been the coldest of cold showers. Something he needed. Had they been provided with a bathtub, he would have taken a bucket to the ice machine outside and filled the bastard to the brim. Then he would have dumped the contents into the tub and slipped inside, his big toe jabbing at the cold tap as he enjoyed the quiet, numb feeling of death. Death of thought and desire. Death of flesh and body. Death of love and hate. Just to rid himself of these accursed feelings, he would have gone that far.

It wasn't a water park. That much was certain. Upon their approach, Marik had begun to comment on the lack of rides or attractions. Bakura's face had become permanently sunk, so he wasn't paying much attention to the road - just the quickly darkening burn marks all over his body. A burn mark on his knee. Burn marks all about his waist. One single tiny burn mark right over his tinier heart. It had been a lucky escape, he'd told himself. Tried to convince himself, at least. Perhaps it would have saved him a lot of trouble, had he been killed off in the explosion. No more Yugi to worry about. No more Pharaoh. No more Marik and his midriff dancing in front of him day in and day out. Oblivious. Beautiful. Moronic. Irresistible. Innocent.

"Idiot," Bakura completed the consecutive link of characteristics aloud. But it didn't matter to him how stupid the boy could be at times; when it came down to it, Marik pervaded his thoughts and dreams just as much as the thought of vengeance against the one who took his family, his friends. He was perhaps the only thing that threatened to make him happy from time to time. The one thing in his life that could restore him. Give him back his family. His friends. Without even the need for bloodshed. And damn if he wasn't drop dead gorgeous. "Such an idiot."

He wasn't even talking about Marik anymore.

As it turned out, Cum Town barely qualified as a town either. There was a waterhole - which Marik immediately assumed to be some form of extreme rollercoaster, "RIDE THE WATERHOLE!" - a rickety looking outhouse, a few scant buildings, and a rickety looking motel. In fact, everything about the place seemed rickety looking. The houses, the signposts, hell, Bakura wouldn't have been surprised if the waterhole turned out to be of the rickety persuasion. Even the horizon, the sun still a few hours from showing its face - almost as if it were ashamed to look upon such a dilapidated place as this - appeared askew and wrong. World gone mad. Or at the very least stupid.

Marik had been enraged at the discovery that there wasn't even a slippery slide in the vicinity, and chose to take out his ire on the rickety town's rickety residents. Parking hastily, Marik had flung open the doors of the Cum Town Motel and slammed both fists onto the check-in desk . He did nothing in half-measures, except of course think. He then proceeded to shriek at nobody in particular about the lack of embarrassing photo opportunities and/or churro stands, until finally he was interrupted by a sharp cough from Bakura, who then explained to him that he was complaining to a stray dog. It had apparently wandered into the motel off the street, and was now sitting on the desk, staring blindly ahead, twin strings of drool stretching from its haggard muzzle.

"I thought it was just a very ugly person," Marik had explained. "They exist, you know. I've seen them."

"Was this another Maury special?" Bakura scoffed back.

"Not everyone can be pretty like us, Bakura!" Marik wagged a reprimanding finger at him. "If they were, we wouldn't be half as popular!"

They discovered the one and only member of staff lying in the back room, surrounded by empty bottles of what could only be whiskey, judging by the smell rising from every moist part of the room. Marik hadn't been far wrong - the man was about as good looking as the dog, and drooled about the same amount. Perhaps a little hairier. A quick pinch to a particular nerve later, and Bakura had the man up and talking. Not just talking, but begging, since Bakura had grabbed a slice of broken whiskey bottle and placed it against his throat.

"A room, please."

"S-s-smoking or none?"

"We might burn the place down when we're done, sure. It depends what we think of the service."

"And we'd like churros for breakfast!"

"Marik, let me do the talking."

They got a good price for it, too. The only glaring flaw, aside from the rickety stairs they had to take to get to their room, was the fact that they seemed to be stuck with just the one bed. Bakura had balked, whereas Marik, of course, could not see the problem. It would be like a sleepover, which Marik had heard tell of but never actually experienced. Bakura wasn't keen on the whole 'bonding experience' malarkey, and the thought of rolling over in the night and accidentally cupping something of Marik's made the muscles in his legs turn as rickety as the motel furniture. However, he didn't see the point of getting a separate room. He knew that at some point in the night, Marik would probably sneak into bed with him and explain that he'd had another Melvin dream.

The Melvin dreams were common. He'd watched Marik sleep many a time, although not solely from some perverse desire. When they had first begun their evil partnership, Bakura had slept in the tomb where Marik lived, taking up temporary residence in the room that long ago belonged to Marik's father. He'd chosen it because it was the one place that Marik patently refused to enter, a fact that Bakura hadn't even questioned. This was back when Bakura found Marik's behaviour merely annoying, and assumed the benefits would outweigh his innumerable flaws. Being able to sleep somewhere Marik could not or would not also be found seemed like a blessing.

Then one night - the third night to be precise, when the moon seemed to engulf the sky with its pallid majesty - Bakura found his sleep disturbed by footsteps. Slow, deliberate things that became gradually louder. He was about to snarl into the pillow and tell Marik to go back to sleep, when he heard the laughter. It wasn't the same joyful, daft noise he was used to from the other. It was a dangerous, fearsome chuckle. The kind of laugh you'd expect to hear right before someone slipped a plastic bag over your heard and threw you into some dark hole, never to see the light of day again. Just listening to it, Bakura felt dread in his gut like he hadn't felt since watching those bodies fall into the pit so many thousands of years ago. Fall into the pit and be slaughtered like animals. Fall into the pit and cry out to him. Powerless.

He sat up in bed, and looked to the doorway. Marik was there, his face masked by shadow as moonlight poured in from behind him. His arms were flung out from his body like he was in the middle of some crazed dance, and his hair had been thrown into disarray. He looked in the darkness like someone's old rag doll, a sewn-together version of himself that felt all wrong because it had parts that didn't quite match. And that laugh. Harrowing and hollow, and never ever ceasing.

"What's so fu…?" Bakura had begun to ask.

The sound of Bakura's voice triggered something in Marik. He screamed incoherently, like a banshee that could remember the tune but none of the words, and flung himself to the foot of the bed, whereupon he drove his hand under the sheets and scrambled awkwardly alongside Bakura, moving like an animal with a crushed leg, limp and desperate. Bakura felt something pressed against his side, and he knew without question that Marik had a knife. He was good with knives. Probably better than Marik. But he didn't need to let this slip just yet.

"Don't," Bakura had murmured. He matched what he presumed were Marik's eyes, staring into the emptiness of the face he couldn't see. Perhaps there wasn't even a face there. Perhaps Marik's shadow had somehow sprung to life and decided to kill him. It didn't matter. Bakura wasn't about to be murdered just lying in bed. And certainly not without playing a card game first. "I don't know what you want, but I know you don't want this."

There was a grunt, uncertain and yet still cruel sounding, and it was obvious Marik had begun to doubt why he came into the room in the first place. Then the blade was moved from Bakura's body, and he heard it clatter instead to the floor. Then the laughter was replaced with sobs, a huge pathetic wailing noise that caused Marik's shoulders to hitch violently every few seconds. And then, without knowing why, Bakura had pulled him close and rested his chin on the boy's head. He regretted it immediately, and looking back he wasn't sure how or why he'd done it. But he knew in that one brief instant it was the right thing. The only thing. Whatever it was that made him do it, it drove the evil out of Marik for one short night. Like some kind of temporary exorcism. Holy water not included.

Since that night, Melvin had visited often. But Bakura had always been ready.

Now he stood naked in the bathroom, admiring his own thin, pale body. He was like a snow leopard, beautiful and deadly, impossible to predict. He threw the towel to one side carelessly and placed his hands on his hips, breathing in through his nose and relishing the clearheaded feeling. At least for a little while, he wouldn't have to worry about the temptation to make a move on Marik. They would argue over who got to sleep in the bed and who took the floor, and then the next morning they would bicker over who would be driving to the airport, and then they would quarrel about who got the window seat on the plane, ad infinitum. Their friendship would remain only that - a dispute without end. Nothing more, nothing less. That's all he cared for it to be.

He smirked, pale lips curling as he wrapped his mind around the idea of walking out into the room stark naked just to see how Marik would react. No doubt lots of cursing and frigging and questions such as: "Why doesn't yours have a thing on the end like mine?" Bakura rolled his eyes and reaches for his pants, slipping them up and over his junk and settling instead for merely being shirtless when he opened the door. He reached for the handle and called out in his dulcet British voice.

"I suppose I'll take the- bottom!"

He had been about to say 'bed', however his sentence got away from him when he was presented with the image of Marik's bare buttocks placed mere inches from his crotch, Marik himself bent clear over as he reached down and touched his toes. Somewhere, a radio fizzed and crackled out a generic beat to accompany his stretching exercises. Upon much closer inspection - and his eyes had indeed dwelled on it for a long time - Bakura realised that Marik was actually wearing some sort of dark purple thong, but the rest of his body was totally bereft of clothing. He could see every muscle at work in his thighs, a thin curve of sweat arcing down the inside of his leg. Bakura's nostrils flared and his eyes widened, breath catching in his throat. He could see the tattoo on his back, the beautiful precision cuts in his flesh rippling as he moved his balance from one leg to the other. Bakura reached up to wipe his mouth, and found it as dry as the desert outside. He licked his lips, once, twice. Marik's hands clasped at his ankles and he continued to present himself unwittingly.

Bakura stood watching for a few moments, and then forced himself to blink else his eyes become as dry as his mouth.

"Marik."

"Oh, Bakura!" Marik chirped, still bent over, head between his legs as he looked through them and up at him. His blond hair dangled under his face almost comically, but Bakura was too busy being fascinated by the shape of his ass and the way his skin was the same colour all over. Even, as Marik might have put it, where the sun didn't shine. "Sorry, I just got bored waiting for you. Thought I'd do one of my random work outs. I do those. How come you took so long, anyway? You're not usually such a neat freak."

"We just barely survived an explosion," Bakura said, his voice bereft of the usual moxie. He made no mention of the fact that he would have likely been sporting the biggest erection of his life had he not stood a good hour under the rush of cold water. "I think I'm owed a little extra time in the shower. Why… Why are you…?"

"What?" Marik blinked, his upside-down smile becoming a narrow horizontal line. His butt visibly relaxed, and Bakura felt a stirring in his pants. He had to withhold the urge to reach out and grab it. Maybe just put his face in it. Ugh. No. Control. Control. "Why am I in such good shape? I had no idea you wanted to get fit too! All it takes is regular exercise! Here, touch my hinder. You can feel the benefits."

"No."

"Oh come on! That's where the magic happens!"

"I don't want…"

"Touch my hiney, Bakura!"

Bakura swallowed, closing his eyes. He turned his head to one side and felt as though his entire body were convulsing, his mind telling him no, his heart telling him no, but his manhood telling him oh by the gods yes. He reached out, one burning eye gradually opening as all sound seemed to be drained from the room. His hand mere inches from Marik's 'hiney', the boy regarding him expectantly, no doubt waiting to be complimented on the fine muscle tone he'd achieved. Bakura's eyes swam with heat, his fingers trembling, his palm sweating, his mouth now wide open and his tongue caressing the roof as he waited for impact.

Then he snatched his hand back and stammered: "Why are you practically naked, you wanker?"

"Why do you think?" Marik asked, finally straightening up. Bakura watched him adjust himself, still frozen in place as though making any sudden move might cause him to inadvertently smother Marik with his mouth. Marik swivelled around, flexing parts of himself that Bakura had previously only imagined existed. To say he was eye candy would be like saying Willy Wonka was a bit of a sweet tooth. Understatement of the millennium. Whatever the case, Bakura wanted to bite into him - or at least see how many licks it took to get to the centre. "I'm not gonna ride the Waterhole fully clothed, am I! That's just asking for a soaking."

"The wha?" said Bakura. "No, Marik, the waterhole isn't…"

"For the squeamish?" Marik cut him off. "I'm counting on it! Are you going to ride the 'hole with me, Bakura?"

Bakura stood looking at him for a long moment. Then he opened his mouth, the words limping their way out of his throat like wounded lepers.

"I think I need another shower first."


	4. Chapter 4

A sound not unlike an old air-raid siren emitted from Marik's mouth as he waded through the waterhole in the dead of night. Bakura couldn't tell if it was an expression of excitement or a long, perpetuated whine at how very dull the purported rollercoaster ride had turned out to be. Never mind the fact that this whole 'water park' scenario was entirely in his head; Cum Town was obviously just some miserable craphole placed smack-dab in the ass end of Egypt, a far cry from the extreme, thrill-seeking hotspot that Marik had imagined this whole time.

On the subject of ass ends, Marik's was currently glistening in the moonlight, heavy beads of water shining like jewels encrusted upon the curvature of his backside. Bakura watched it rise and fall beneath the surface, carefully observing whenever Marik would attempt to dive or paddle his way through one of the deeper parts of the waterhole. In the dark, the boy looked naked - a moving statue of perfection, slipping in and out of the shallows. In reality, Marik was spluttering and flailing and generally making an idiot out of himself amidst an overgrown puddle, but somewhere in Bakura's fantasies, he had become a mythical siren beckoning to him from across the waves. Tanned and angelic, blond hair cascading behind him and eyes violet flames of passion, reaching out for him. Calling his name.

"Hey Bakura!" Marik sang, turning to look over his shoulder. If the sun had broken over the horizon and captured him in that moment, Bakura could almost picture how beautiful he would have looked. Brown skin made light red by the morning light, his arms slowly rising to tussle his golden locks, the tattoo printed on his back winking in and out of existence as he moved seductively, thighs drawing themselves apart and his ass cheeks beaming brightly with excitement. Instead, he was just the same old fidgety shadow he'd been for the last half hour. Bakura was once again grateful for the darkness. "Why don't you come in? Are you scared you'll have too much fun?"

"That's exactly what I'm afraid of," Bakura replied. On this rarest of occasions, he wasn't in the least bit sarcastic. "Too much fun."

"Watch this, Bakura! I'm going to do a headstand!"

"Wonderful."

Marik flipped himself over in the waist-high water with a nervous grunt. The last Bakura saw of him was a thrashing pair of legs and then a violent tumult of foam, and then nothing. Silence. A few pathetic ripples the only evidence that remained of his attempted gymnastics.

"Good job, Marik," Bakura sighed, placing his head in his hands and looking out to the horizon from his spot on the shore. Dawn would soon be approaching, and he hadn't had a wink of sleep yet. He was too busy babysitting the object of his desire. For he was an object, pure and simple. He couldn't allow himself to view Marik any other way. A means to an end. An unwelcome alliance. Anything but his friend. And the thought of becoming more than that set his teeth on edge. "Now hurry up. The sooner we're done with this bollocks, the sooner we can get out of here."

There was no reply. Bakura cocked his head and listened for the familiar childish cackle, or some sort of indication of Marik doing something foolish - this usually involved his breathing - but nothing came to him. He drummed his fingers on the dirt impatiently. Five minutes had passed without even a word from the other. Something wasn't right. Even when Bakura abstained from taking part in his ludicrous council activities, Marik would always insist on dragging him along for the ride. A moment's peace with Marik around was about as realistic an expectation as a shonen anime without flashback sequences. Yet there was no nagging, no whining, no laughter or shrieking. It seemed as though Marik had simply stopped being Marik.

Bakura's first thought was that Melvin had taken over somehow, which would explain why he felt so very unsettled. However, it was far too quiet for that. Melvin may have been a less obnoxious character, but he was also anything but subtle. Had Marik transformed into his psychotic counterpart, no doubt the dunes would be ringing with peals of frenzied laughter, and he would be coming at him through the water like Martin Sheen at the end of Apocalypse Now, ready to plunge something sharp into Bakura's own heart of darkness. No, something had gone wrong, something was very amiss, and this time it wasn't the result of some magical deus ex machina.

Then Bakura saw him. His body now floated a few hundred yards away from where he'd struggled to pitch himself into a topsy-turvy position. Motionless. Still. He was face-down in the water, his tattoo pointed skyward as though some god had reached down and inked him with a biblical rubber stamp. Thou shalt not skinny dip. Bakura watched him drift across the surface for a few seconds, expecting at any moment for him to pull himself up from out of his faux slumber and jeer at Bakura for showing even the slightest hint of concern. Then without even realising it, Bakura had plunged himself into the waterhole, diving headfirst and swimming as fast as he could toward Marik's unconscious figure, the whole time trying to maintain his composure. Act like he wasn't worried, that this was just one more annoyance in a long line of annoyances.

He rose from the water next to Marik, trembling fingers resting upon the boy's body, and he knew at once why he had fallen unconscious. A dark purple mark had manifested in the top right corner of Marik's brow, and blood was rapidly welling up from a crescent gash beneath it. He had struck his head on a rock while throwing himself face-first into the shallow end of the waterhole, and it had driven what little sense remained in Marik's skull all the way out of him. Bakura cradled his body and strode purposefully toward the shore, muttering anxiously to himself all the while.

"You're going to be fine. Of course you're going to be fine. You're a bloody idiot. You're the least intimidating villain in the entire series. You're all those things and more, but one thing you're not going to be is dead. When I set you down here, you're going to come to and look at me and say something so goddamn stupid it makes me want to slap you, and…"

He set Marik down. He waited.

"And I'll slap you and then you'll tell me I slap like a girl, and I'll tell you that you'd have to have actually flirted with girls to know what that feels like, and you'll pretend you've flirted with lots of women before, and I'll tell you that zoo animals don't count, and you'll probably have some ridiculous story about going to the zoo, and then…"

No sound. No movement. No story about zoo animals.

Bakura checked. No pulse.

Bakura's face shattered into a million angry creases, and he pawed at Marik's shoulders, shaking them and cursing amidst the terror of the moment. Still no response. Without a thought, Bakura leaned over the boy's weirdly expressionless face and pinched his nostrils tightly shut, cupping his chin with his free hand and drawing open Marik's mouth. He wrapped his lips about Marik's own, breathed into him twice, and at no point did the thought occur to him that this was their first kiss. He was too busy looking for movement in Marik's face or chest, too busy waiting for the sound of his ragged breath. But all he saw was blood coursing across his brow, and the only sound he could hear was his own heartbeat, pounding to escape the prison of his ribcage so that it might throw itself upon Marik's body and lie there waiting to drown in the open air like some overweight goldfish.

He drove his palm into Marik's firm chest. He hadn't learned CPR, didn't even know if he was doing the right things, but he knew enough to try. Desperation had taken hold, electricity shooting down his spine and setting his gut afire. His resuscitation attempt was violent, haphazard, dangerous. He was probably doing far more damage to Marik than the waterhole had. Several presses later, he moved back to Marik's lips, letting the boy suck air from his own lungs, and closed his eyes, wishing he had tears to hold back. Of course he was doing it wrong. Of course this wasn't going to work. He'd dedicated his existence to destroying other people's lives, to ruining their chances of survival. Why should this be any different? Why would he be able to save someone now, after all his efforts to do the opposite?

Thrusting his hands against Marik's broad chest once more, he began to laugh. There was no joy in it. Not even anger or frustration. It was just noise for the sake of it, so that he might hear something instead of the faint rasping of his own respirations while Marik lay beside him and seemed to grow more and more silent with each passing second. As he moved in to give Marik mouth to mouth for a third time, he could still hear his own booming chuckles echoing from one end of the waterhole to the other, and he found himself struggling to prevent himself from biting down furiously on Marik's lip, hoping to draw blood, hoping to elicit any kind of reaction, negative or otherwise. Just to wake him up. Just to bring him back.

He roared, throwing his fists wildly and falling backwards like a wino being ejected from his favourite drinking spot. Arms flung outwards, he landed flat on his back, parallel to Marik, and stared up at the quickly fading starlight, candles being snuffed out one by one. He had spent thousands of years under that sky, and yet this was the first time he'd looked at it and felt truly in awe of his own insignificance. Powerless and small, he drew his hands to his face and slowly pushed his fingers across his own eyes, like some morbid curtain call at the end of a depressing production that went on far too long; the only remaining audience member lying dead on the floor beneath the stage, naked and without care.

"Of course I couldn't save him," he sighed inevitably, "I'm the bloody villain."

He sat up, bleary-eyed and bereft of feeling. Had Yugi been here, or perhaps Kaiba - hell, even Joey - they probably could have done something for Marik. They were heroes. They had earned that right, somehow. The right to make a difference, as far as the plot was concerned. Bakura, for all intents and purposes, was just a puppet. An antagonistic puppet, but still a puppet. His only purpose was that of an obstacle to surmount, a hindrance to overcome. Of course, he was good at it. Perhaps the best. But with all the powers of darkness at his disposal, he had no use for the light. And it was light he needed at this moment. Light to pull Marik from death's clutches. Light to steer Marik back into waking. Light so that Marik might see what he means to him.

As if to mock these sad, poetic thoughts, the first light of dawn at last pierced the horizon. Bakura clambered to his feet, shielded his eyes, and stared into the burning pit that was the sun. It was early enough that the intensity in its glare was reduced enough for him to look directly into it without fear of damaging his sight, and he watched it rise once more as it had done infinite times before. This morning, it would do its job with the same turgid regularity. Just another day. Nothing significant. People live. The sun rises. People die. The sun sets. Marik dies. The sun rises. Marik dies. The sun sets. Marik is dead. Marik is dead. Marik is dead.

He could no more look at Marik's body than he could tear himself away from the sun, its head peeking over the horizon like a guilty party wondering if the coast was clear. He had looked into the fire before. Several millennia ago, his family had been tossed into its waking embrace. Flames caressing their skin, flesh melting, bones crumbling, bodies upon bodies, families upon families. His hand clasped the Millennium Ring about his neck, and he felt the metal seem to burn coolly at his fingertips. The old fires had never gone out, they just waited for you. Waited for your friends, your loved ones. Waited for you to lose them, and then when they left you, it burned its brightest and let you feel more than you'd ever felt. The empty spot that used to possess them, vivid and terrible.

Bakura screamed, and in one frantic motion he drove his fist into Marik's chest, across his heart.

Immediately, Marik's eyes snapped open. "YEAH! That's what I'm talkin' about!"

Bakura careened back, landing ass first on a stone that caused pain to flare all the way up his back. He didn't notice. "M-Marik? You're all right?"

"I told you!" said Marik, pulling himself up and thrusting an exclamatory finger into the air. "That ride is so totally NOT for the squeamish!"

Bakura just stared at him.

"You should've joined me, Bakura!" Marik continued, wiping his brow and giving the blood on his face merely a passing frown of acknowledgement. "I mean, at first it wasn't anything special. Just a lot of paddling and wading, but then there's this part where you go underwater and something flashes really bright and you get this kinda numb sensation. Then you're floating in the air, and it feels like you're not even in your own body anymore! It's like the ground is just rushing away from you, and you're in the sky, in the clouds, it was amazing! And then you go down this really, really long tunnel, and I was waiting for the photo opportunity at the last minute where they tell you to smile for the camera, but it was just so bright toward the end part I couldn't tell if the flash had gone off or not. And then there was this voice, kinda sounded like James Earl Jones, but he was all, welcome! Welcome! Yaaay! And then there was this huge drop, and I was waiting to fall into the water and get sprayed, but instead I just landed here next to you. And then it was over."

Bakura continued to stare, his face blank and impervious to Marik's elation.

"Did you punch me?" Marik rubbed his temples, his excitement wavering for a second. "I seem to remember you punching me at the end. Weird. Oh! Hey! Let's ride it again, together! Come on, you just gotta wade out here and…"

Bakura grabbed Marik's arm and wrenched him back, away from the waterhole. Marik turned and looked at him the way an infant looks when they want something real bad but know it's not in their immediate future. The way Marik had looked when he'd asked Bakura for a Buzz Lightyear action figure two years ago. It had been effective enough that Bakura had bought him one the following year, but in this instance, no amount of puppy-eyes could cause him to allow Marik the opportunity to brain himself all over again.

"Just one more ride?"

"No," Bakura hissed. "No more rides. You almost died."

"It's not THAT dangerous, Bakura! If it were, they'd have a safety railing and stuff."

"SHUT UP!" Bakura shoved Marik down to the ground, whereupon he made a noise like a frightened field mouse. "Do you have ANY idea…" _What you mean to me. What you are to me. What we could be to each other. What I almost lost. What I would give to never lose you. _"… How STUPID you are?"

"Nuh-uh!" Marik rebutted. "I'm the one who found this kick ass water park, remember! Plus there was this one time I went to the zoo, and…"

Bakura kicked him square in the jaw, just to stop him talking, just to stop him from making this another 'moment' between them. He was done with moments. Losing him back there, short-lived as it was, had been the wake-up call he needed. He knew now that the closer he got to Marik, the worse it was going to feel when he ultimately lost him. And he was going to lose him, one way or another. Marik was mortal, an affliction Bakura did not suffer from. And Bakura was damned if he was going to spend eternity mourning one more soul. Even one so beautiful as his.

"Give me the keys," he whispered.

"What?" Marik rubbed the spot on his face where Bakura's foot had scuffed it. "Bakura, you've got your own key for the room, if you wanna go back…"

"The car keys," Bakura said. "The stupid keys to your stupid car, stupid."

Marik lowered his eyes, looking down at his kneecaps and drawing them to his chin. The joy had been drained away from his face, and he was now in full pout mode. "We're leaving already? I thought we could spend a few days here. You know, just the two of us."

"There is no 'just the two of us', Marik," Bakura corrected. "Not any more. You can stay here in this stupid place as long as you want, I'm getting the fuck away from here. Away from you. Consider this my resignation from your stupid council."

"Our stupid council." Marik's voice was soft. This threw Bakura for a loop. "It's our stupid council."

"Well, I'm putting you in control now," Bakura smiled. There was nothing real about it. He hunched down and grabbed Marik's ear, tugging it so hard he expected Marik to cry out. He did not. Instead, their eyes merely met each other, and Marik's expression was such that Bakura almost felt the need to look away. "The keys. You dumb fuck."

"They're still in the car."

"Of course they are!" Bakura rolled his eyes, both out of exasperation and as a means to keep himself from having to stare into Marik's own accusatory violets. He stood up and turned to walk away, in the direction of the Marikmobile - to be henceforth known as the Bakuramobile. Didn't have quite the same ring, but he'd have plenty of time to come up with a catchier moniker in the Marik-less years to come. "You know, you're right, Marik. Coming here was probably the best plan you've ever conceived. I congratulate you. Now, goodbye."

With that, he walked away from Marik, suppressing the urge to look back. He knew Marik would be watching him go, knew he'd be the same supple, gorgeous boy that once plagued his thoughts - but not any more. He was giving up on him, on them. They were a terrible evil duo, and would make even worse friends, should it ever have come to that. Best to put the bastard out of his misery. Best to move on to bigger and better things. Bakura told himself he was making the right decision, the only decision. That his villainy would know no limits without Marik tying him down. That he would never again have to wonder what it was like to feel anything more than hatred.

And yet still he stole a look over his shoulder before losing sight of the waterhole, and saw Marik playing idly with a stick, drawing things in the sand. The old Bakura would have turned right back around and gone to see what he was sketching, and then proceeded to make fun of his less than artistic skills. But not this time. He was done caring. He was done wondering about what could be. All that mattered now was himself.

"Goodbye, Marik," he said to himself, climbing into the Cadillac and finding that, indeed, the keys were still placed carelessly in the ignition. "So much for thiefshipping."

Bakura turned the key.


	5. Chapter 5

Fumes retched from the car's exhaust as Bakura drove with one hand on the wheel, the other caressing the hot leather shape of the empty passenger seat beside him. The weary noise of the engine put him in mind of an angry chainsaw, and already he was plotting new and sadistic methods of destroying his enemies - one enemy in particular, of course.

"Yugi," Bakura's lips curled, the first word he'd spoken since leaving Cum Town. It was as appropriate a word as he could muster. His mind had for so long been fixated on having his way with one boy, of doing all kinds of inappropriate and doubtlessly painful things with his body, and relishing every long awaited moment of it. And now, he was thinking about Yugi instead, putting the other far behind him - an attractive brown speck amid the receding, dust-smothered desert on the rear view mirror. Bakura's left eye twitched, and his nostrils felt strangely small. His lips drew themselves in, and he wondered - the way a blind man wonders what the world around him truly looks like - if his eyes were attempting to well up. "Marik."

He had left Marik back at the waterhole, in a town that would have probably sprouted crooked legs and abandoned itself had its inhabitants not already done so. The word shanty had been created for places like that. Other words, too. Shithole. Ramshackle. A ramshackle shanty shithole. That's what it was. And now it was Marik's new home. Add that to the list. Home. Although Marik probably would have chosen 'hideout' over 'home'. Their brand new hideout.

No, not their. His. Marik's. Alone.

"And good riddance to the bastard," Bakura growled in agreement with the engine. "Not like I've ever gotten anything out of our partnership." As he spoke, he bit his fingernails into the passenger seat and felt the fabric puncture, his mind conjuring images of Marik's smooth back pressed urgently into his hand, blood welling up to meet his nails as he imagined himself scouring the boy's shoulders with needful claws. He blinked the daydream away. "We're both better off alone. Neither of us plays well with others. Me, because I hate everyone and everything. Him, because… He's an idiot. And now the idiot gets to play with himself. Because I'm done playing. From this day forth, the only thing I play with is people's lives. And trading cards."

Bakura realised that this was the first time in perhaps months that he'd been able to sustain an entire monologue without being interrupted with questions or dumb remarks, all in that daft, nasally voice. He sighed and released his hold on the seat, returning his hand to the wheel so that he might steer safely around a pothole. Had Marik been driving, they probably would have rolled right over it, causing untold damage to the car and their bodies. Or maybe it would have been all right. Maybe, even if they'd struck the pothole, it would've just shaken them up a bit, and caused Bakura to yell expletives at the other while Marik complained that he'd asked Zombie Boy to make it so the car's suspension would compensate for any bump in the road. Bakura would be tempted to fire back at him, call him on his ignorance, but then he'd get lost in the colour of his eyes or skin or find it impossible to stop looking at his-

"Bollocks," said Bakura, thumbing at the radio and hoping for the musical equivalent of cold water to the groin. From somewhere within the one working speaker came the Talking Heads classic, Road To Nowhere. Bakura tried to ignore every thought pertaining to Marik that now bounced gleefully around inside his skull. He closed his eyes and concentrated. One by one he silenced them, reaching inside his cranium and strangling every bad idea and erotic fantasy, until finally his mind was a barren galaxy, silent and dead, except for the dim music crackling from the speaker somewhere outside the deranged seclusion of his brain.

He was about to open his eyes once more and continue driving into the early morning. His plan was, as ever, to get to Cairo Airport and fly the hell out of this overgrown sandpit, only his destination would not be Detroit. That was Marik's plan, and his part in that was over. He was going to beeline it straight back to Domino City, and visit a certain Game Shop, machete in hand, and ask if they'd been slashing prices recently. If not, he would be more than happy to oblige them. Then there would probably be a card game, and about seven episodes later he'd be no better off than before. But at least he'd have acted on his instincts, which is something he could never do when he was so close to Marik. His instincts became muddled when he was around that boy; they grew fierce and uncontrollable. And not in the good, psychotic way. He was about to open his eyes and do all of this, relinquish all doubt and return to his former glory, when the silence in his mind was disturbed by a soft, disgustingly polite voice.

_You can't just leave him there._

Had this been a Disney movie, this would have been Bakura's conscience speaking, likely taking the form of an adorable cartoon rabbit or some such. However, the real source of the voice was decidedly more palatable - although most fangirls would tell you he was about as adorable. Ryou, the child whose body Bakura now inhabited on an almost daily basis, was speaking to him from the mystical confines of the Millennium Ring. Hearing the boy's voice at all was a once in a blue moon experience, so Bakura immediately applied the brakes and reached for the Ring, pulling it to his face and scowling down at it, his reflection glaring back at him through the item's golden surface, splintered and accusatory.

"What the bloody hell do YOU want?" Bakura spat, sounding a lot angrier than he'd intended. He usually regarded Ryou's concerns with ambivalence, showing neither positive nor negative emotions toward him. To express support or grief implied investment, and he was determined to have no such thing in the boy's mind, body, or soul. The most Ryou typically received in response to his pleading was a brash chuckle or snide remark or two. This sudden explosion of emotion seemed almost alien, and took even himself by surprise. "Let me guess. You're getting hungry in there, eh? Don't worry, we'll stop off for some food at the airport. Stuff your fat gob full of Egypt's finest delicacies. Now do shut up and let me drive."

_What do you think is going to happen to him? _The voice persisted, and Bakura felt his left hand clutching at the wheel the way he'd like to grab at Ryou's fragile little neck. Squash that little sod's trachea and have his sweet gurgling be the last noise to meet his ears before his soul crept back into the Ring, his host body lying dead on the side of a nameless desert road. _You know he can't survive on his own in a place like that._

"He'll figure something out," said Bakura. "It just won't be with my help."

_You have to go back for him._

"What do you care, anyway?" he asked, wanting to fling the accursed, chatty necklace out into the desolate plains and be rid of it forever, be rid of thought or feeling or memory of everything he'd had to do to get to this point. He wanted to think only of tomorrow, and nothing of yesterday. No more nightmares of the past persecuting him for eternity until revenge came bitterly in blood. More than anything, though, he wanted the voice to leave him alone to stew in his self-righteousness. "He's one of the bad men. He wants to hurt you and all your friends. He wants to help me destroy all of you. Why, you should be encouraging me to leave him behind. Isn't that right? Better him than you."

_If I were in your place, _Ryou's voice seemed louder now, as though it were coming from between his own lips. _I would rather die than lose any of my friends. Especially one that means as much to you as him._

"He's not my…"

Without his knowledge, he had retrieved the photograph from his pocket. His arm was trembling violently, and it felt like the whole left side of his torso had gone oddly numb. He wondered briefly if he'd been out in the sun too long, but then he understood - Ryou had managed to wrestle control of his hand for just long enough to pull out the photo and show it to him. The edges had been curled by the fire, and there was now a slight crease across where Marik's midriff now peeked over the horizon of the white border, but otherwise it was in perfect condition. The two of them, arms around each other, completely oblivious to the futility of their partnership.

But it didn't matter if it was futile, did it? It didn't matter how often they tried to vanquish the Pharaoh, or lure Yugi into some dark and inescapable trap. It didn't matter how many failures they'd racked up over the years, or how many times Marik had completely ignored his advice to the detriment of everything they'd strove to achieve. The only thing that really mattered, to him at least, was that with Marik, he didn't feel so alone anymore. Five thousand years he'd moved from passenger to passenger, taking possession of some of the most ruthless minds the world has ever seen. And now here, within the body of a teenage boy who liked crumpets and tea, he'd finally found someone that made it feel like his family never left him. Like his childhood friends had never been tossed into a fire and barbecued for the glory of a forgotten king. With Marik, he felt like things were okay. Not great, but a step above average. And for him to feel that way after all these years of hating the universe and all its inhabitants, well - that was an improvement.

"He's my only friend," Bakura whispered to the photo, placing it to his cheek and pretending he were resting his head against Marik's. "Whatever that means."

He was suddenly set upon by a series of terrible thoughts. What if something awful had happened when he left Marik? What if he had fallen into the waterhole and drowned himself all over again? Or worse, what if he'd wandered aimlessly into the desert, following the path of the Bakuramobile, hoping to catch up to him before Cairo Airport. What if he were out there now, all haggard and frightened, buzzards watching expectantly from the rocks nearby? Of course, he would try to befriend them, give them names like Mr. Tweetums Jr. Before long, he would be doubled over, butt once again in the air as he gave the world one last glorious glimpse at his ravishing body, before it wasted away into a wizened, sand-coated skeleton. Back onboard that great big rollercoaster in the sky.

Bakura slapped the photo onto the dashboard, swung the wheel all the way to the left, and made a vicious u-turn. Dust smacked him unapologetically in the face as if to say "You're making the biggest mistake of your life, you know?" And he knew. He knew full well.

And nothing in the world could stop him from making it.

###

Marik sat upon the bed facing the wall, naked aside from the swath of purple that constituted his thong. He had wrapped the covers about him, fists balled underneath as though using it as some kind of cloth force-field. Bakura could not see his face. The lights were off, and he didn't want to startle him. He could, however, hear him crying.

There was nothing sad about the sound. In fact, were they in any other situation - like, say, watching a romantic movie on DVD, hypothetically of course, because they'd have to be totally gay for each other to actually do so - Bakura would likely have chortled up a storm. Every so often, Marik would let out a noise resembling a frog or a duck, or perhaps a mixture of the two, his sobs usurped by quacks and ribbits. All it needed was the customary over-the-top blowing his nose into a handkerchief, and the whole thing would be like something out of a comical pantomime skit.

But Bakura wasn't laughing. He knew Marik was hurting after what had happened. He knew all too well the pain he was capable of giving to others. He was a master of the art - made it his life's work, you know. The last person he'd ever truly wanted to share this feeling with, the eternal feeling of betrayal and isolation and hurt, was Marik. Childish, spoiled Marik. The last thing he wanted was to contribute to the misery loaded upon that boy by his own father. He stared into the tattoo - which at this moment may as well have been Marik's face, twisted and beautiful - and marvelled again at its precision. Someone had put all their heart and soul into wounding him. Now it was Bakura's turn to heal what extra damage he had done.

"Marik," he said softly. All at once, the crying stopped. Marik, however, did not move an inch in response, not even to turn his head. It was as though he refused to acknowledge the sorrow in Bakura's eyes with that in his own. "I'm glad you're okay. I mean, well, you're not… You're not dead, is what I'm saying." Not off to a good start. "I was having these wide-awake nightmares about finding you face-down in the mud, bereft of life. Never really worried about anybody like that before. Usually a thought like that would be the highlight of my day. Creature of habit and all that." He didn't know if the silence was in disapproval or if Marik was just waiting for the apology. "Look, I… I'm… I don't want you to think I just left you here, never wanting to see you again. I mean. Come on. Of course we'd see each other again. You're a villain, I'm a villain. We both operate in the same circles. Same interests. It's inevitable we'd meet up somewhere along the way. But, look, I came back because… Because I don't want you to…"

He stepped forward, placing his hand on the edge of the bed furthest from Marik. Bakura half-expected him to rise to his feet and move across the room, plastering himself to the wall and moaning pitifully. But there was still no response, physically or vocally. It must have been taking every ounce of will left in Marik's body to refrain from interrupting with some dense non-sequitur. He was usually so effortless with them. Bakura slowly rounded the corner, and propped himself on the rim of the bed, as close to Marik as he could get without actually sitting beside him.

"I don't want to not have you around," Bakura explained, handling his words the way an amateur duelist would shuffle his deck, slow and clumsy. "It took me a long time to realise this, but you've done a lot for me. I just haven't been aware of it until now. The truth is, you're the closest thing I could ever have to a friend. And I do enjoy being near you." He bit into his lip so hard he expected to taste blood at any second. "You're the only person in the entire universe I don't want to destroy. You, Marik. I would kill the rest of them in an instant, but I would go out of my way to keep you safe. And it hurts to know I almost did that. Almost destroyed you. What we have together."

Bakura reached his hand across the bed and went to touch Marik's arm, clasping it gently and giving it a single firm shake. He didn't want forgiveness. He knew such a thing didn't exist. But he did want to know Marik was still his friend. Of all the absurd things to worry about, this one small, insignificant thing concerned him above all else.

"You understand, don't you?" He asked. Begged. "You must know how hard it is for me to say this? To even feel it?"

"Of course I understand," Marik turned to show his bloodstained face. His chest was marred with cuts and bruises, and much to Bakura's confusion, he was laughing. It took him precisely two and a half seconds to realise what was happening before it was too late, and Melvin had brought the Millennium Rod down upon the side of his face, knocking him out with one swift blow.

As Bakura's consciousness faded, the last thing he heard was Melvin's voice, so little and yet so much of Marik inside it.

"I know all too well how you feel."


	6. Chapter 6

Once again, Bakura woke to the sensation of being pinned down. Except on this occasion it was not a mere seatbelt that held him, but shredded bed sheets that had been tied about his waist and arms, fastening him to the chair in the middle of the room. He felt the rapid approach of pain as his left ear throbbed and rang with immediate clarity. He tried to shuffle his feet, but found those to be similarly bound. Now his jaw joined the ear in its chorus of agony, a rush of white cold electricity coursing down the side of his face where the Millennium Rod had caught him unawares. He heard a slow dripping sound and quickly began to wonder where he was bleeding from.

His panic was short lived, however, as Melvin stepped out of the bathroom in front of him, water running down his face and chest, which was still covered in thin lacerations that threatened to bleed anew. His hair was slick and flat, having just emerged from the shower, and it made him look for all the world like Marik - which should not have been so strange, considering they were one and the same, but it was disturbing nevertheless. Melvin's hair typically gave him away. There was something eerie buried within the change; the transformation set everything in the boy's body on edge. His muscles grew tighter, hair wilder, eyes madder, rage stronger. It improved him in all the wrong ways, like a drug nesting inside his system.

Bakura felt his body retreat against the back of the chair, as if repulsed by the faux-Marik that now stood before him. The chair rocked slightly, and he knew without even having to look that it was a typical piece of Cum Town furniture, rickety and unreliable. If he tipped himself over, the chair would no doubt explode on impact, potentially freeing him. But of course, if he did so, who was to say that a stray piece of wood wouldn't jam right into his leg or arm? He would need his strength if he was going to fight Melvin, and escaping from the chair was only step one. If he managed to injure himself just by breaking free, Melvin was the sort to take advantage of that. He had to bide his time and think this through.

"Awake then," Melvin regarded with apparent indifference. He crept forward, and Bakura couldn't help but admire his body - it was Marik's, after all - and notice how pronounced everything was. Compared to Marik, Melvin was physically statuesque, each individual muscle flexed unnaturally to its limit. Bakura wondered if it was painful, the way his body forced itself into that shape, to both match and reflect the sinister urges within. If it was, he didn't show it. "But is it really you, or the puppy dog living inside your necklace?"

"It's me," Bakura replied, and found his voice a great deal hoarser than he'd hoped. Showing Melvin any sign of weakness was like asking to be tortured. "I thought you of all people would be able to recognise me. How many times is it now? Fifteen? Sixteen? You come to him in the night and steal his mind away, and I'm always there to shut you down."

"I didn't realise you were counting," said Melvin, placing a finger underneath one of the cuts on his own chest and sketching an invisible line from one end to the other. Blood seeped from the path he made, the slightest pressure on the wound enough to draw it out. "I've been counting too.""Counting the number of times I chased you away like a bad dream?" Bakura smirked, ignoring the blood.

"Counting the number of minutes you have left," Melvin continued, moving his finger to another fresh cut and sliding it firmly across his broad, bloodied chest. "The number of breaths. The number of heartbeats. And believe me, you don't want to know the results. If I told you, it would take all the fun out of it."

"You really think you can intimidate me?" Bakura shook his head. "You're a slow learner, Melvin. Perhaps even slower than Marik."

"I had hoped it would be the other first," Melvin reached down and snatched the Millennium Ring from around Bakura's neck. Bakura winced momentarily, the sight of Melvin's weeping chest filling his vision. He withheld the urge to bite down on his hand until he released the item. Violence could wait. "The little boy trapped inside here. Sweet little Ryou. I imagined that when I knocked you out, he would take control of your body, like some kind of emergency backup. But I suppose he had enough sense to stay out of this one."

"He's completely worthless," Bakura scowled. "To both of us."

"A pity," Melvin relinquished the Ring and locked eyes with Bakura. "It would have been fun to play around with him before getting to the main event. Tell me, when you feel pain, does he feel it too?"

"Not always," said Bakura. "His soul is usually so distant that anything I experience comes to him like calm waves, weird shadows cast by something he can't quite see. He only feels something as I do if he wants to feel it."

Melvin nodded, his eyes dead and distant like those of a shark. A rag doll's eyes, giving the impression of life but never quite matching up. Bakura's eyes lowered for an instant and he caught sight of Melvin's crotch, still clad in the ridiculous purple thong. It was enough to rid him of the fear that had begun to sneak into his stomach. Something so ludicrous mixed in with the palpable dread. It helped.

"You should know," Melvin grinned, and the smile on his face looked for all the world like one of the thin gashes on his chest, threatening and gruesome. He reached down and placed a hand over Bakura's heart, blood smearing his shirt and leaving behind a print not unlike the ugly finger paintings you'd see strewn across kindergarten walls. Then his grip immediately tightened, and he pulled Bakura to him, the chair lurching forward. Their lips were pressed together, Melvin still sporting that deathly grin. "It's not the same for me."

"What?" Bakura's voice was quiet enough that neither of them could detect the abject terror caught in his throat, but loud enough to hear his concern clear as day.

"I can make him feel whatever I want," Melvin explained, pushing Bakura away. He stood back and spread his arms wide, and as if to demonstrate he took up the Millennium Rod and drove the bladed end into the back of his left hand. At no point did he scream or even cry out, but Bakura could see by the look in his bloodshot eyes that something inside him was experiencing everything. After a few seconds, Melvin withdrew the Rod and let out a gasp. Bakura couldn't tell if it was from pain or elation. "I can make him feel everything, or nothing. I can make him numb to the world, or let him see everything as it really is. I'm not like you. You're the puppet who cannot see his strings. I'm the one who pulls them."

"Melvin," Bakura glowered. "What the hell are you trying to prove? That you can stab yourself? I'm sure there are easily influenced teenagers all over the world who would applaud your pathetic display, and who knows, they might even put you in the new Jackass movie, but I for one am not impressed."

"You're telling me this doesn't worry you?" Melvin asked, a single eyebrow raised in genuine curiosity. He dragged the sharp end of the Rod across his stomach - lightly so that it didn't slice through the skin as easily as it could have. "That I can make him suffer? That I can make it so he knows you just sat there, and let me do this to him? You already abandoned him. Who knows. Maybe I can get him to believe you did this."

"You're insane," Bakura scoffed, but his eyes never once left the tip of the Rod. He watched it move up and down Melvin's chiselled abs, caressing them with its cold blade. At any moment, Melvin could sink it deep into himself, and perhaps he wouldn't feel it, or perhaps he would but it would transfer to Marik all the same. For the first time in five thousand years, Bakura felt as he'd done when watching his family being rounded up by the Pharaoh's men. Uncertain, paralysed, and afraid. He felt like that weak little child of Kul Elna, murdered by history. "Melvin, hurt me all you like, cut me open, cut me into a thousand tiny pieces. But leave him. I beg you.""You? Beg me?" Melvin's voice broke into peals of cruel laughter. He clutched his stomach, head rolling back on his shoulders as he roared. Then in an instant, he was the same calm, collected creature he'd been moments ago. "Look at you. You pathetic excuse for a villain. What happened? Did the fangirls finally get to you? Have you deluded yourself into thinking you and Marik can actually be… together? If so, you're even more insane than I am."

"It's not about what we could be," said Bakura, arching his back and wrestling with the sheets, struggling as best he could to loosen them. "It's about what we are. And I won't let anything stand in the way of it. Even you!"

With that, he threw himself backwards and slammed his body to the ground as hard as he could, the chair shattering beneath him in a cloud of splinters. He felt a shard of wood from one of the chair legs puncture his left thigh, but the pain was the least of his worries. Launching himself from the ground, he reached for the Rod, grasping it in both hands and struggling to prise it from Melvin's clutches. Melvin just watched all of this take place with the same amount of apathy one would expect to see in someone viewing the weather report, mildly surprised by the change in climate. Bakura cursed as his hands slipped on the blood coating the Rod's golden surface, and then cried out as Melvin lifted the Rod back and out of his reach before plunging it into his shoulder. He felt his arm twitch wildly in reflex, the other flailing in a vain attempt to land a punch on Melvin's face, but he had already been driven to his knees and his weak lunges served only to accentuate the pain.

"You know, I have an even better idea," Melvin mused, casually turning the Rod inside him the way one would twist a bottle-opener. Bakura could feel the sinews in his shoulder shredding, a dark red stain appearing on his shirt as blood gushed from the wound. "I'm going to make sure he doesn't experience any of this. And then I'm going to mutilate you beyond recognition. Afterwards, when I'm done enjoying myself, I'll let him come back, and he'll see what he did to you, and he'll never be able to let himself get close to you ever again. Maybe I'll even carve a nice little tattoo in your back, just like mine! A memento, you might say."

"Don't you get it?" Bakura fought against the pain. He tried to pull away, but Melvin simply fell on top of him, the Rod sprouting upwards from his body like some obscene flagpole, marking the spot where they both collapsed. They lay there, bleeding together, and Bakura knew there was no use fighting. If he attacked Melvin physically, he would only let Marik feel it, and that would defeat the purpose. All he could do was try and talk him down. But he was already growing very weak, and didn't know if he would even had the strength to speak much longer. "There's nothing you can do to destroy what we have. That's what you hate so much, isn't it? That there's something in this world you can't destroy. I know because I hate it too. Just as much as you do. Perhaps more. Believe me. I hate what he's become to me. But I can't deny it anymore than you can. And no matter how badly you disfigure me, it won't change what we are. What we feel."

"What you feel," Melvin repeated. He wrenched the Rod out from Bakura's shoulder, and moved it toward his face, the tip resting dangerously over his eyelid. He dangled it lazily over Bakura's cheek before lowering it in the direction of his mouth, slipping it inside and poking it into the roof. Bakura could taste his own blood mixed with Marik's hitting the back of his throat, and felt the need to vomit. "What you feel won't matter when I carve out your tongue. You won't be able to tell him a thing. So if I were you, I'd speak while you still have the chance. Say it. Tell me everything you feel. Let it all come pouring out."

Bakura could feel the Rod shifting inside his mouth, blade inching its way toward the back of his throat as he grunted and gargled on blood. Somewhere in the room, the motel radio was playing the chorus from some old Stealer's Wheel tune, and Bakura couldn't help but smile at the irony, his lips curling awkwardly around the Rod's shaft as he tried to form words.

"Marr-ugh."

"What's that?" Melvin chuckled sadistically, drawing the Rod out from Bakura's mouth and placing it instead over his windpipe. Bakura swallowed, the blade massaging his throat as he did so, and tried to ignore the hot copper taste. "I'm afraid I can't seem to hear you over all the bleeding you're doing."

"Marik," Bakura's breath was as sharp as the Rod that now jammed into the underside of his chin, his stomach hitching frantically as he tried to overcome the overwhelming sense of guilt trapped inside. He'd left Marik alone to be taken over by this monster, and now he was paying the price. Perhaps he deserved to be marked, to be scarred by the same hatred Marik had for his father. No, the last thing he wanted was for Marik to look at him and be reminded of the terrible things he was capable of doing. He couldn't let Melvin hurt him anymore. Hurt either of them anymore. He was going to apologise, say the words that he'd never been able to say to another human being for as long as he could remember. Because in his heart, he knew they were meaningless. But instead of an apology, from his lips came three other alien syllables: "I love you."

Melvin's face sank. The pressure on Bakura's throat disappeared, and the Rod clattered to the floor and rolled safely under the bed as if to hide itself from what might happen next. Melvin's eyes were darting back and forth, from one side of Bakura's face to the other, as if looking for some trace of a lie, a smirk, anything to give away the fact that this was some manner of deception, that it wasn't real. Bakura's face remained calm, steadfast, and if anyone were to try and describe him in that moment, they'd probably have said he looked for all the world like Ryou. Placid and unaffected by the evil currently squatting on his stomach. Melvin growled and slammed his fists against his brow, haggard hissing sounds seething from his mouth. Veins swelled up on his cheeks and around his eyes like a bulbous fleshy web, and he flung himself to one side, clawing at the ground.

"No! No, no, no!" Melvin roared, legs kicking outward almost as though he were struggling against some unseen hands that were threatening to drag him away. He wailed unintelligibly and bit at the floor, teeth clamping oddly against the wooden panelling as his body convulsed. He looked for all the world like a small child throwing a temper tantrum, if the small child were trapped in the body of a muscle-bound predator. He pulled himself along the floor, fingernails scraping loudly on the wooden panels as he left a crimson trail in his wake, like a dying slug. Eventually he stopped, inches away from the bed, one arm outstretched as if reaching for the Rod buried amongst the dust bunnies. Silent and unmoving now.

Pain caught in his shoulder as Bakura scrambled to Marik's side, for it was Marik now and not the beast within. His muscles had relaxed and the hair on his head receded into an attractive blond mess. Bakura lifted him into his arms, cradling the naked boy as he had done so many times following an encounter with Melvin. But this was different. This wasn't just some ritual he was performing to calm Marik's nerves, this wasn't a meaningless attempt at cooling him down after the rage took hold. This was for both of them. He held Marik the way he would have held his own mother or father, had he been able to save them from the fiery depths. He clung to the boy, stroking his back and feeling the constant wound placed there that would be with him for the rest of his life, and realised it was a wound that would stick with both of them. Because he was never going to leave his side, or abandon him, or let anything bad happen to him ever again if he could help it. This was the closest he was ever going to get to knowing what true love felt like. It was pain. The most beautiful pain he'd ever known, and it was theirs alone to share.

And in that moment, Bakura cried for the first time in five thousand years.

"Bakura…?" Marik asked, his voice bereft of anger or hate - or, for that matter, intelligence. He looked up at Bakura, confused at the other's emotional outburst. Their chests were pressed tightly together, and Bakura was certain that Marik could feel his heart racing - the heart that didn't even belong to him. "Are you crying?"Bakura wiped the back of his arm across his face and did his best to regain his composure. It seemed Marik didn't remember anything of what just happened. Of all the things Melvin could have allowed Marik to experience, his heartfelt confession did not appear to be one of them. "It's nothing.""Did you see a sad movie?" Marik asked, dumb as ever. "Was it The Notebook? I saw that on a plane once. I thought it was the worst remake of Death Note I've ever seen. Although Rachel McAdams as Misa was good casting."

"Yeah," Bakura agreed, slipping his arms down Marik's back and sighing into his ear. "Those bloody Americans. They'll never get anything right, will they?"

"No, they… Wait, am I bleeding?" asked Marik, disgusted more than anything. "Well that's just great! How am I supposed to pose for the DVD cover of our amazing road trip movie now! I mean, Photoshop can only do so much."

Bakura smiled. This felt good. Tomorrow, he would probably find his behaviour as infuriating as ever, but for now, having Marik back was everything. "We're anime characters, Marik. Our wounds will heal quickly enough if we just don't talk about them."

"But the blood!" Marik whined, apparently unaware that Bakura was affectionately stroking his lower back. "It's all over your shirt, Bakura. We don't have any other clothes."

"Who said I have to be wearing clothes?" Bakura's forehead rested against Marik's, and he waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "It's our DVD.""I'm not doing a porno," Marik held up a single defiant finger. "A snuff movie maybe, but no sex. Everyone knows that sex is less watchable than death. Especially on DVD."

"Fine," Bakura purred. "We'll just have to film lots and lots of deleted scenes."

"Eh?"

"Come on," Bakura urged, taking Marik by the hand. "A quick shower will sort all this out."

"We're showering? Together?""Wouldn't want to waste any water," Bakura winked. "Especially in the desert.""All right," Marik shrugged. "But this will have to be on the extra special unrated extended three-disc re-release of the producer's cut."


	7. Chapter 7

"I should probably warn you," Bakura reached into the shower cubicle and gave the valve a jerk, the metal nub landing smack in the centre of the red slice running counter-clockwise from the temperature dial's apex. His fingers brushed through the arc of water squirting limply from the UFO-shaped nozzle, his smile broadening as he felt it go from cold to lukewarm in a matter of seconds. "This is about to get bloody hot."

The bathroom with its hideous lime green wallpaper was already something of a squeeze for two people, to say nothing of the shower itself, so Marik had opted to sit hunched over on the toilet seat while Bakura deftly fiddled about. He was a far sight different from the psychopath that had been occupying his body mere moments ago, a criss-cross of chest cuts and a stab wound to his hand the only remnants of what had transpired. Otherwise, he looked as daft and as innocent as ever, naked and cross-legged, arms folded impatiently as he waited for the water to heat up. Every so often, he would fidget, scratching his neck or flexing, and Bakura's eyes would be drawn inevitably to his crotch - albeit not for the reason one might expect.

"Marik, do take off that infernal thong," Bakura groaned, running a hand across his own face as he blanched. "I'm sick of looking at it."

"But it's so freeing!" Marik argued, pulling the elastic apart from his body and letting it snap back against his thigh, the sound all too pleasurable to Bakura's ears. "It's like I'm wearing underwear, but I'm also NOT wearing underwear! It's a miracle of science. If only they could design an entire outfit that made me feel completely naked."

"If you want to feel naked so bad," Bakura lifted his shirt up over his head, teeth clenching as he felt the sharp outcry of his shoulder, and tossed it at the miniature wall shelf next to Marik's head. He placed his hands on his hips and grinned through the corner of his mouth. "Then just get naked. How else do you expect to wash 'where the sun doesn't shine?'"

"Actually," Marik began, "I make it a point to sunbathe completely naked at least twice a week, so the sun gets everywhere. It's physically impossible for me to wash where it doesn't shine."

"When do you…?" Bakura flushed, his pants already halfway to his knees as he felt a stirring in his underwear at the thought of Marik sneaking off to tan his privates. "Never mind, I don't want to know."

"Great idea!" Marik leaned forward on the seat, his legs uncrossing as he eagerly slapped his hands down on his bony, bronze kneecaps. "We could tan ourselves together! After all, you look like you could use a few hundred sessions."

Bakura flinched, kicking his trousers toward some unseen corner and squeezing his fingernails into the palms of his hands. He was naked aside from his underwear, and the amount of attention Marik was giving his body was new to say the least. The throb of his shoulder wound was nothing next to the burning in his cheeks.

"I'm perfectly content with my complexion," Bakura grumbled. "Besides, it's not my body."

"It's a good thing too," Marik replied, "because you look like a friggin' corpse."

"What?" Bakura rasped, looking down at his sunken chest and noticeable ribcage. He bit the inside of his mouth and rolled his eyes upwards, hoping that his embarrassment wasn't as perceptible as the odd stains on the ceiling. "I'll have you know, when I was still alive, I was just as tanned as you are. More so, even." He gestured to his face. "And I had a really sexy scar over this eye. I was the king of thieves!"

"And I'm the king of Steves!" Marik cooed, getting to his feet and clapping Bakura on the good shoulder. "We're a perfect fit!"

Bakura snorted. The steam rising from the shower suggested that it was just about ready for them to clamber inside, so he slipped his hands down either side of his body and slowly removed his underwear, his face a fraction of a inch from Marik's chest as he bent forward. Then he rose back up, a nude corpse, and snuck a finger through the band of Marik's thong, as if moving to caress his backside, tugging at it."Speaking of things that fit a little too well," he reminded playfully.

"Ah-dyah!" came Marik's animated reaction, and he hopped back a step so he might escape Bakura's grip. Bakura watched with interest as Marik sheepishly rid himself of the offending purple band. He held it in his hand, elastic wrapped taut about his fingers and Bakura had to stifle a chuckle when he saw how small the thong appeared when it wasn't clasped neatly about his crotch. Then the amusement in his throat grew still as his eyes focused on Marik's cock; his pupils dilated and he once again felt physically inferior to the boy. His mouth snapped closed like a mailbox door, and he began to wonder if they truly would be a perfect 'fit' after all. Then he was startled by Marik impishly flicking the thong at him, whereupon it caught on one of his bangs and dangled teasingly in the corner of his vision. "So are we showering now or what?"

"Erm, yes," Bakura replied, scooping his mind out from the gutter and brushing the stray thong out of his hair. "Quite."

They both moved to enter the cubicle, Marik a half-step in front of Bakura, eager as ever. He laughed as their bodies smacked together, and Bakura felt his leg slipping in between Marik's as they struggled to squeeze together comfortably, propping his foot against the plastic levee that ran along the outside of the stall. Their backs were now thrust against the walls, Bakura's butt positioned poorly over the shower control valves, the metal contours massaging his ass cheeks like a colonoscopy surgeon who had forgotten to warm his hands, as he craned his neck and attempted to twist himself into a more familiar position. Marik had his chest pressed firmly into the side of Bakura's face, and was reaching for the shampoo while gargling tunelessly into the overhead deluge.

"Me agh Bahgarah we wull hah ahh wahvaaangh!" Marik blurted, his knee brushing against Bakura's inner thigh. Bakura's entire body grew tense with pleasure and he lost his footing for a moment, buttocks crashing down onto the temperature valve as he flailed his arms to find purchase. He grabbed frantically at the shower curtain and dragged it to one side, pulling himself up only to find that his ass had managed to turn the dial all the way into the blue. It wasn't so much the temperature that told him this - considering his proximity to Marik's naked body, it felt as though he were on fire, regardless of the freezing water that now pummelled his back - but the pout on Marik's face as he scrambled to eye-level. "Bakura, your bottom made the water cold."

"Oh," Bakura mumbled. Without taking his eyes off Marik - for they were literally nose-to-nose and he was too busy enjoying their lack of personal space to worry about coordination - he reached back and gave the valve a twist. Immediately the water went from ice cold to blazing hot, causing Marik to flinch and back away all of one inch. Bakura moved into him, taking the brunt of the hot water. "It's all right. You get used to it after a while."

"Yeah? What about you?" Marik asked, as Bakura took the shampoo bottle from his hand and popped the cap open with a flick of his thumb. He poured clear gel into his palm and brought his hands together, rubbing them in circles and all the while staring into Marik's curious violets. "Aren't you hot? Doesn't it bother you?"

"I'm always hot and bothered around you," Bakura replied, running his hands through Marik's blond locks and lathering him with shampoo. He watched as the foam, the same milky colour as his skin, dripped from Marik's scalp and onto his brow. Wiping it from his face, Bakura moved his arms around Marik's back and guided himself forward, holding their bodies together as he continued to wash the boy's hair. He felt no resistance as he placed his lips to Marik's ear and whispered: "Now you have to do me."

"What?" the back of Marik's head hit the clear shower screen with a dull crack. It didn't seem to phase him.

"It's only fair that you wash my hair too," Bakura grinned. He pulled Marik back into the shower's path, rinsing his hair for him as Marik closed his eyes and allowed him to go to work. Then, with Marik's eyes still closed, Bakura reached down and grazed his fingers against the small of his back, curling them around his thighs and ever so softly squeezing the skin around his buttocks. He felt himself grow hard against Marik's leg, and he pursed his lips provocatively. "Do you feel that?"

"Feel what?" asked Marik, opening one eye. "Oh! The clean feeling that comes with a fresh shower? I totally do! It's like that one commercial with the attractive lady in the shower and she's all YES! YES! … You know, I never did get that one."

Bakura sighed. Any other bi-curious teenager would have been thrusting and grinding at his backside by now, but Marik was still more interested in the minutiae of classic television commercials. He decided to make things rather less subtle, and dropped the shampoo bottle to the floor of the cubicle. "Whoops. Butterfingers. Let me get that."

He was about to turn around and jam his ass into Marik's waiting crotch, hoping that the position alone would be enough to get the muddled hormones to reach Marik's brain, or at least his cock. In fact, preferably just his cock. Were Marik to actually think about this situation, he might realise that they'd both already showered once today and would immediately start towelling himself off. Bakura ran his tongue across his teeth and he began to pivot, when Marik suddenly lunged down.

"It's okay, I've got it!" Marik announced, and Bakura felt his cheek brush against the side of his now raging boner, and for an instant Marik's face was buried in between Bakura's legs, damp hair tickling at his balls. He felt his skin prickle with excitement and his voice catch in his throat as the all too brief moment of contact passed, and Marik was back up with the plastic bottle in hand. "Are you okay, Bakura? Your nose is bleeding."

"It's just the heat," he lied, wiping the blood onto his knuckles and watching it disappear in the water flow. He couldn't take much more of this. If Marik had been even remotely aware of how badly he was cockteasing him, Bakura would have dropped the act and gotten down to the real foreplay. But it was impossible to know if Marik was truly as oblivious as he seemed, if he was actually the airhead he portrayed himself to be. Because if he wasn't, and this whole thing was an elaborate act, then he was perhaps the greatest evil genius that Bakura had ever met. "Don't get any in my eyes."

"Turn around then," Marik ordered. "Your hair's all in back anyway. Big ol' creampuff."

Bakura did as he was told, placing his hands against the wall and tossing his head back, spreading his legs. It wasn't quite the erotic display he'd been planning, but it was close enough. He turned and gave Marik a coy smirk and arched his shoulders.

"Be gentle with me- YOW!"

Catching him in mid-sentence, Marik was now tugging violently at Bakura's hair, shampooing every spike and bang with unnecessary vigour. Bakura winced, but took it all the same. This went on for a few minutes, before Marik reached around him and pulled his head into the water spray, Bakura still poised against the wall with his arms outstretched, hair flung back until it became a white, soggy teardrop shape. Finally, Marik was done. Bakura was about to turn around and thank Marik through gritted teeth, when he saw Marik replacing the shampoo onto the shower caddy and retrieving a small orange sponge in its stead.

"Hold still, Bakura," Marik insisted, beginning to sponge Bakura's back for him. "When I'm done, you're going to feel so pampered!"

"Whoopee."

Bakura tilted his head and tried to appreciate the rough sensation of the sponge as it licked at his back with all the tenderness of a steamroller. As he did, he found his erection rapidly losing its staying power, and so he reached down and tried his best to encourage his member to stand its ground. Fingering it, jerking it, muttering curse words and picturing Marik in any number of positions, it wasn't enough to put the obnoxious scraping sensation to the back of his mind. It was like water torture - each time Marik hit him with the sponge, it was just enough to make him lose his grip on whatever once made this situation seem so appealing. He shook his head and focused once more on tugging at his cock, wanting to turn around and surprise Marik with just how much he wanted him - throw his arms around him and let their junk get to know each other. Then he'd bite at his neck and give his ass a good squeeze, and then he'd start jerking Marik off and watch as his face went from that vacuous, befuddled look to one of ecstasy and after he climaxed he would take him into the other room and-

The sponge clawed at his back, and he let out a disappointed cry.

"Gah!"

"What's wrong, Bakura?" Marik asked. The same dopey voice, no allure, no arousal. "Is it your shoulder?"

"It's nothing," Bakura replied, keeping his face hidden. "Keep going, I'm really… enjoying this."

"You sure?" said Marik, the sponge hesitating against his spine. "I could always help you, you know."

"Help me with what?" Bakura half-turned to look over his shoulder, but then froze in place when he felt Marik's hand reach around his waist and grasp the shaft of his cock beneath where his own hand had gripped. There wasn't even a moment's hesitation before Marik was stroking it, pumping at the shaft and tracing along the inside of Bakura's thigh with his index finger as he did so.

Bakura quivered, the fingers on his free hand curling down as he felt the borders between fantasy and reality retreating into a thin, indivisible line. Bakura bit his lip, fastened his eyes tightly shut, and then opened them, expecting to wake up and realise that none of this was actually happening. Then he looked down and saw that Marik had pushed his hand away and was now coaxing the tip into the palm of his own hand, wrist nuzzling the underside as he stroked the length of his now fully erect penis.

"Wh-what are you…?" Before he could finish, he felt a finger begin to sneak into his asshole, and he panicked - not from fear, but from sheer surprise. He pulled away and span around, half-expecting to be confronted with someone completely different - perhaps even a reappearance from Melvin was the cause of all this perversion. But no, it was Marik. Same old Marik. With hands probing at his crotch. "Marik?"

"What's wrong?" Marik smiled. It wasn't the usual, dumb smile either. This smile had a secret, and Bakura had a feeling it was a dirty one. "You looked like you were struggling, Bakura. When I'm touching myself, I usually use both my hands, like this, see?" Marik demonstrated. Bakura moaned, loud and incoherent. "It's much more effective!"

"Marik…!" Bakura said again, reaching down to stop what was transpiring - not because he didn't want it, but because he knew he would finish at any moment and didn't want to do so with this cloud of confusion hanging over his head. "I just want to be clear on this. You do know you're touching my dick right now, don't you?"

"Duh!" Marik's nose wrinkled attractively.

"But I thought you weren't… I mean, I thought that YOU thought you weren't…?" Bakura struggled. "I mean, when did you figure out that you're…?"

"Bakura," Marik smirked. "I figured it out about the same time you figured out you loved me."

Bakura's heart rose, then sank, then rose again, like a bright red buoy on an uncertain tide. "You heard that? Why didn't you tell me?"

"And miss the look on your crotch?" Marik cackled. "It was much more fun to play dumb. A villain always have to have a trick or two up his sleeve!"

"You are the worst villain I've ever met!" Bakura spat, doing his utmost to mask his joy. It didn't work; the smile kept tickling the corners of his mouth as he glared, and the pink rush of colour across his cheeks didn't help matters.

"I take that as a compliment," Marik preened, dipping to his knees and bringing Bakura's cock to his mouth, where it twitched impatiently. He wet his dark lips and guided it inside, welcoming it with the impressive length of his tongue, licking the underside of his helmet from side to side. Bakura's nerves, having only just set themselves at ease, were once again lit up like floodlights on a football pitch as he felt Marik's tongue at work, neck pumping back and forth as he sucked hungrily and without pause.

Bakura's knees were jelly as he struggled to remain upright. This whole scenario had thrown him for a loop - he was supposed to be the one to seduce Marik, not the other way around. But of course, Marik had been doing it the whole time, hadn't he? Drawing him in with that pretty, carefree attitude, and that flawless body, and the promise of something he wanted but could never have. And now he was giving him that forbidden treasure. It seemed too good to be true. But it was very true, and very good.

He moaned once more and laughed, a weird and nervous sound - the sound of someone who doesn't quite know where they are, or who they're with. Marik was slowing down, his lips wrapped tightly around the tip of his member as he slurped and lapped at it with his expert tongue. Bakura nodded to nobody in particular, his knees giving way, and yet again he found himself having to embrace the shower curtain to prevent himself from collapsing. He pulled it close, buried his face in the stiff plastic sheet, and enjoyed. He'd waited so long for this, for shower curtains and awkward noises and tongues and blowjobs in shitty motels and feeling and knowing and water running down his face.

Had he cried today? Did that really happen? Was it even possible that he was sad on a day like this? Maybe this wasn't the same day. Maybe this was another day. Maybe it was tomorrow already, and he'd missed the last twelve hours. Twelve days. Years. This was good. This was better than good. This was-

Marik bit down on his shaft.

"Rrgh!" Bakura hissed. "Not so much with the teeth, Marik."

Marik shrugged and continued sucking.

Bakura turned his face to the shower head, lifting his arms up and adjusting the spray so it caught him across the chest and rolled down his pale stomach onto Marik's shoulders. He watched dizzily as Marik's tongue attacked him, the tattoo on his back barely visible through the water cascading down their bodies. In his mind, they were somewhere else, somewhere luxurious. The Pharaoh's palace. Bakura was seated on the throne, dressed in the murdered king's garb, and Marik, his servant, was kneeling before him, sucking off the man who did what nobody else could. Destroy the Pharaoh. Take the Millennium Items. And the whole of Egypt had no choice but to bow to him as he held aloft the Pharaoh's bloody corpse and tossed it into a burning pyre. And Marik was there, and they held each other, and laughed, and fucked in the Pharaoh's bed, and fucked in his throne room, on his throne, everywhere, they fucked-

Bakura heard Marik reacting to his climax before he even knew it had happened. The whole blowjob, teeth aside, had felt like the most incredible orgasm he'd ever experienced. It was only when Marik gulped and made exaggerated spluttering sounds that he knew he'd finished. Then he noticed he was breathing heavily to the point that he had exhausted himself simply from doing so. He fell back, letting go of the curtain and dropping to his ass in the corner of the shower. Everything tingled. His feet, his face, his heart, his cock. It wasn't something he was too familiar with - feeling this good about everything. He looked over at Marik, who was wrestling with the shower head, trying to spray into his mouth and rid himself of the aftertaste. Bakura chuckled cruelly. Not that he wanted Marik to swallow per se. He would have said something if he'd known it was going to happen so soon. It just looked so cute.

Bakura smiled. He was finally comfortable with this. Finally okay with the way he felt about Marik.

"You doing okay there?" he asked at last, when Marik had leaned away from the nozzle. "Sorry if it didn't taste so good."

"It feels like I ate a huge pile of salt!" Marik complained. "And then washed it down with a bottle of salt water! And then had a salt cake for dessert!"

"Awfully specific," Bakura patted his leg sympathetically."I speak from experience," Marik replied, and there wasn't a doubt in Bakura's mind he was telling the gods' honest truth. "We should probably take care of our stab wounds, huh?"

"Give me a minute," Bakura held up his hand. "I'm waiting for this to turn out to be one of those inconvenient dream sequences or drug-induced hallucinations."

"You get those a lot?" Marik asked, shutting off the water. He crouched beside Bakura and leaned against him, their bodies slick and their hearts beating at each other like an argumentative couple, loud and erratic.

"More than you'd think," Bakura sighed. "Hey. Pinch me."

"To see if you're dreaming?" asked Marik.

"Sure, let's go with that," Bakura grinned. He brushed the edge of his nose against Marik's, and kissed him for the first, real time.

They kissed for at least ten minutes before Bakura realised he never did wake up.

It carried on.


	8. Chapter 8

Bakura had just finished fidgeting with his pants when there was a knock on the door.

"Just a minute!" He called out from the bathroom, which was blissfully twice the size of the one they'd been shafted with back in Cum Town. It also didn't come with its very own family of stains. He leaned over the sink and jammed the cold tap with his wrist, giving his hands a hurried soaking. A few discarded paper towels later, and he was finally ready to answer the knock, his shoulder complaining weakly as he reached for the door handle and affected a gruff, angered tone. "What do you want?"

Marik stood in the corridor, looking like someone had shredded his prized yaoi collection. The creases in his typically flawless brow were matched only by the frustrated grimace that had stolen his usual enthusiastic expression. Elsewhere on the floor, Bakura could hear the familiar tumult of otakus and cosplayers screaming about mini-skirts and numbers that exceeded nine thousand. He ignored such trivia and gave Marik his full attention, admiring the handiwork he'd done on Marik's palm - he'd become quite adept at treating wounds, having seen many a bloody battle in his time as an evil spirit. Wrapping it with the sheets Melvin used to bind him to the chair had seemed grimly appropriate, and with Marik's status as an anime character, he was guaranteed to heal in no time, so long as nobody paid it much mind.

"I have never been so outraged!" Marik howled, brushing past Bakura and entering his hotel room.

"Hello Marik," Bakura said to the empty hallway, closing the door and turning to regard Marik's tirade. "Do come in. Make yourself at home."

They had arrived in Detroit around six hours ago, having flown in from Cairo Airport. To Marik's dismay, they'd had to abandon the Marikmobile in the airport parking lot, from where it would doubtlessly be towed within a matter of days. It had been strange for both of them to say farewell to the vehicle - Bakura had suggested they just set fire to it in the middle of the desert so nobody else could claim it, leaving behind an ugly pink carcass, but Marik insisted they just let it go wherever fate might carry. He would have protested further, but Bakura was too impressed by Marik's ability to simply let go of something so important to him to voice his disbelief.

From there, they had no difficulty boarding a flight - they had more than enough money for it, all of it taken from the trust fund Marik's father had set up many years ago for his son, Billy. Although in this case, a 'trust fund' described a big hole under his bed filled with millions of dollars that Hank Ishtar had acquired by pawning the pharaoh's lesser known priceless artifacts - an ancient relic here, a golden ornament there. Treasures nobody would miss if they didn't know to plunder for them. The flight took them straight to Detroit, whereupon they found themselves inconvenienced by the customs agent for looking suspiciously underweight.

At the hotel, they reconnected with the rest of the evil council, joined by newest members Dan Green, Luna, and Umbris. Or was it Lumis and Umbra? Bakura could never quite tell who was who, even when he did get their names right. Such was his apathy toward their third annual council meeting, that when it was over he immediately retreated to his room - booked several nights ago, and as such was separate to Marik's own designated hotel space. Too separate, in fact. Their rooms were about thirty floors apart. Which meant that Marik had traversed the crowded elevators and labyrinthine corridors just to complain to him about whatever it was that was on his mind. Bakura felt touched.

"Something bothering you?" Bakura asked dismissively, pouring himself a cup of tea from the complimentary service provided. He gave it a sip and savoured the familiar burn on his tonsils. "Not happy with how the meeting went?"

"That's the least of my problems right now!" Marik declared, flinging himself onto the bed. His legs kicked upwards and his arms spread outwards like a child making a snow angel. Bakura contemplated crawling over him, letting Marik taste the sweet tea flavour on his tongue. The thought dissolved pleasantly like the sugar in his drink. "Although I will say, it wasn't right how you didn't stick up for me back there. You know I'm not gay!"

Bakura swallowed too quickly, and half-coughed, half-spat the tea back into the cup. "I beg your pardon?"

"I mean, you know that I'm only gay for you!" Marik corrected himself, sitting up. "I'm very comfortable with my gayness where you're concerned. But as far as anyone else goes, totally hetero!"

"Of course," Bakura smiled, setting the cup down on the bedside table lest Marik go into any further details of his straightness. "You're right. I should have stuck up for you. I mean, if anybody should know how straight you are, it's me."

"Is that some kind of double on-tondur?" Marik asked, Bakura sitting beside him - close enough for their arms to brush up on one another. Marik's butchering of the French language gave Bakura the briefest of chuckles. "Because if it is, I don't get it."

"I'm perfectly serious, of course," Bakura replied, a playfully offended tone to his voice. "When you were going down on me, I had this sense that your heart wasn't really in it."

"What?" This riled Marik up more than Bakura expected. It was like pouring water onto a housecat, the way his back arched and his jaw stuck in the air like an angered ballet dancer. "I was totally into that! And so were you!"

"Oh, I loved it," Bakura admitted. "But I knew you weren't enjoying it. I mean, were you even hard the whole time? You looked a little flaccid from where I was standing."

"I was hard as a rock!" Marik screamed, arms flailing wildly as he attempted to describe his erect penis like some sort of lewd game of charades. "You obviously weren't paying attention!"

"Difficult," Bakura said, "when the person sucking you off is obviously thinking about naked girls the whole time."

"I WAS THINKING ABOUT YOU!" Marik yelled, lightly stabbing a finger against Bakura's lips. "AND HOW MUCH I WANTED TO EFF YOU!"

"I'm sure the neighbours appreciate that little smidgeon of information," Bakura took Marik's arm and lowered it for him, staring into him with a serene compassion. Marik stared back, his eye giving a twitch that Bakura was all too familiar with. It was the same twitch he had suffered from when Marik had been driving him crazy with his unconscious gestures and body movements, when he had been unable to give license to his urges. The tables, it seemed, had turned. "It's all right, Marik. I'm teasing you. You really do give a good blowjob. The best blowjob any straight man could hope to give."

"Damn skippy!" Marik agreed.

"Now, what is it that's really bothering you?" Bakura asked, retrieving his tea and sipping away, while only half-listening to Marik as he rattled on.

"It's gone!" Marik began, getting to his feet so he could properly gesticulate without smacking Bakura in the back of the head. "I've looked everywhere for it, and I can't find it! I bet airport security thought it was a weapon of mass destruction or something! This country, Bakura! I'm telling you! Political correctness gone mad!"

"Start from the beginning," Bakura smiled at nothing in particular. "What's gone?"

"My thong!" Marik cried, pacing from one end of the room to the other in emotional disarray. "My tiny purple thong! I haven't seen it since Cum Town! I knew I should have never taken it off!"

"You think you left it back there?" asked Bakura, finishing the tea and smacking his lips. "Would you like me to fly all the way back to Egypt right now to check?"

"Would you?" Marik asked, only to be met with the thin, humourless line of Bakura's mouth. "No, you're right. We can't go back tonight. Not when there's a Vic Mignogna panel tomorrow morning. Can't miss that!"

"Indeed," Bakura blinked.

"I don't know where else it could be, though!" Marik whined, turning to inspect Bakura's bathroom. "Wait, you got a tub? No fair. My room doesn't have a…"

Marik's head span back around on his shoulders, while the rest of his body refused to follow suit. It was like some invisible fist had socked him in the jaw, and he didn't know quite how to respond. For unbeknownst to Marik, while he had been complaining, Bakura had busied himself with the process of bending over the side of the bed and allowing his pants to drop just enough so that Marik could get a good glimpse of purple. Bakura's face was a mess with glee as his grin spread from one cheek to the other, shaking his backside at the stunned boy. He tugged his waistband slightly, and revealed his crime. The thong, clad tight to his ass, leaving nothing to the imagination.

Marik stepped toward him, eyes wide with both desire and gratitude. "How long have you been wearing that?"

"Since Cum Town," Bakura confessed. He lowered his back and lifted his butt higher, Marik now standing within arm's reach. "Call it a souvenir, I suppose. I must say, I didn't see the appeal until I tried it on myself. Now I can see why you like it so much."

"It's like wearing underwear…" Marik began, fumbling for the rest of the sentence.

"… Only not," Bakura agreed, sensing Marik's hand reaching out for him. "I assume you want it back. Go on. Take it. It's yours." He dropped his head, and gave his voice a low, luxurious quality. "It's all yours."

With that, Bakura knew his plan had come to fruition. He hadn't expected Marik to come down to his room quite so early, but he'd given himself enough time to prepare - putting the kettle on while he stood naked in the bathroom and applied a good dose of lube to the inside of his asshole. He had been pulling up his trousers when he'd first heard the knock on the door, and he'd struggled the whole time to keep a straight face since Marik entered and proceeded to fall into his trap. He closed his eyes and waited.

He wasn't kept waiting long, as Marik reached out with both hands and slid the thong down from his waist and pulled it about his knees. Bakura could feel the tight, rubber grip pulling them together, as if they weren't already weak enough, and then Marik's hands were caressing his butt - ginger circles, followed by a few hard squeezes. Bakura growled impatiently, and bunched his hands into the bed sheets, preparing for whatever might come next.

As it turned out, what came next was Marik's voice. "Roll over."

"Mmm?" Bakura turned to look, and saw what he imagined was Marik's 'sexy' face. It was something Bakura had never before had the privilege of viewing, and it was both amusing and endearing. A focused, fervent smile and lidded eyes, tip of his tongue playing at his lips. If he were a woman, Bakura supposed he would look sultry. As it was, he looked very, very gay. "All right."

Bakura turned himself over, moving his bare legs so that he could rid himself of the constant reminder of the thong strapped to his knees. He spread himself wide, lifting up his shirt so that Marik could get a good eyeful of his cock, hard as it was. This seemed to satisfy Marik, and he began unbuckling his own pants and removed his effeminate shirt, the vestiges of his chest wounds now disappearing like old love bites. Marik was not wearing underwear, presumably due to the loss of his thong, and it pleased Bakura to once again look upon his impressive manhood. Everything about Marik was physically perfect. It was just a shame about the not-so physical stuff.

Marik leaned forward and slid his hands across Bakura's arms, until both their fingers touched and intertwined. Bakura gasped as he felt the tip of Marik's cock nudging the outside of his asshole, a sensation so unfamiliar yet so welcome. They kissed. Bakura allowed his legs to take on a life of their own, pawing at Marik's back with his toes and curling them around his waist. Every time they broke for air, he would mutter something that he immediately forgot, and every time his words grew shorter, quicker. Marik barely gave him time to speak, the kisses came so fast and so hard. And then he had reached under Bakura's thighs and hoisted his body further up onto the bed, stroking beneath his legs and squeezing at the parts of his body that had enough flesh to provide a handhold.

They held their breath together.

Marik entered him, and Bakura's muscles tensed, his chin meeting his chest as his mouth gaped into a long, drawn out moan. It was pain and pleasure, it was love and hate, it was want and need and everything that mattered, and it was theirs. Marik thrust into him once, and he laughed, despite himself, a loud and awesome feeling. Another thrust, and he felt a rush of pain in his shoulder but chose to ignore it because damn this felt good. To finally have Marik inside him, to have him and this moment for keeps. Forever. Then another, and another, and…

Something didn't seem quite right. Bakura opened his eyes and looked up at Marik, who was thrusting with everything he had. And it was then that he saw the problem.

"M-Marik, what are you doing?" Bakura asked, eyebrows curling into an unfamiliar display of sympathy.

Marik had been grinding at Bakura with his entire body, the way one might attempt pull-ups if unfamiliar with the basics of exercise. The motion was enough to cause penetration, but after a minute it had started to feel like Marik was attacking him with his body - had he been more overweight, the pressure would have been unbearable. It also, above all else, wasn't in the least bit sexy.

"This isn't sex?" Marik asked, slowing to a halt. "That's what we're doing, right? Sex? Because this is how they do it in those comic books I have."

"Yes," Bakura replied between breaths. "But you might want to use your hips a bit more, and not pull yourself up over me like a turtle dragging itself out onto the beach to lay its eggs."

"The turtle thing doesn't do it for you, huh?" Marik replied, and Bakura got the impression he was actually trying to be cute with that one. "All right, hang on, let me just adjust…"

Bakura opened his mouth to speak words of encouragement, but they proved redundant by Marik's sudden slamming of his hips into Bakura's buttocks, his still firm cock driving deeper into his ass. Bakura clawed at the bed sheets and moaned, thinking of all the ways he wanted to ride Marik, how he wanted to dominate him and then be dominated. Marik, meanwhile, had caught his hands under Bakura's thighs and was leaning into them, his dick finding new ground inside Bakura's asshole. They moved together, like the world's clumsiest dance partners, neither one matching the other's speed or intensity, and neither one doing exactly what the other wanted to do at any given point, but regardless it was beautiful and ugly and wrong and right all at once.

Curses flew from Bakura's mouth as he felt his ass grow tight around Marik's irrepressible shaft, the muscles in his legs growing weak as he attempted to maintain his pace and composure. He felt for all the world like a bloody virgin, and it was embarrassing. While it was true, his current body had never experienced the wonders of intercourse, as a spirit wandering from one vessel to the next, he had acquired a veritable Kama Sutra of experiences. Yet here he was, being fucked into oblivion by the guy of his dreams, and all he could do was lie back and pump his legs like he was riding a very sexy unicycle. He cried out in both frustration and ecstasy and slapped eagerly at Marik's ass, egging him on.

Marik, having finally gotten to grips with the whole hip-action part of the procedure, was now bearing down on him, his face smothering Bakura's neck with kisses and bites. Lots of bites. It seemed to be one of Marik's kinks. Bakura watched his head dart this way and that, leaving behind a necklace of passionate red welts. Then it was back to the thrusting, and Marik threw his entire body backwards, his hips pounding against Bakura's ever tightening ass, the exhilaration showing in every fibre of Marik's body. For a second, he looked for all the world like Melvin, muscles flexed impossibly, beads of sweat amassing on his chest and highlighting his gorgeous midriff. But it wasn't through anger or hate that he appeared this way, it was passion, unbridled and incomparable.

As he felt Marik finish inside him, Bakura reached forward to catch the boy, spent as he was. He hooked his legs around Marik's thighs and pulled him down onto the bed, his asshole still wrapped urgently about the thick, angry tip of his still hard cock as it pumped its load laboriously into him. There they lay, staring into one another's eyes, totally lost to the glow. After a while, Marik wet his lips and spoke first.

"You know, you don't look nearly as good in that thong as I do."

"I don't doubt it," Bakura whispered, closing his eyes and enjoying the feel of Marik's breath against his sore neck. He smiled. "You're still hard."

"So are you," said Marik.

"Yes, but I didn't finish," Bakura argued. "Not yet anyway."

THE END


End file.
